.1^    L 


r^'r^^"^  '^$''.<^clnh.  tittil  Spring  should  uanishudlli  the  Rose! 
^'^^^'  ThQ|youlli'ssweetsceiife(lniQnii$cripI  should  close! 
I^Vlr^ci;;^^  tliat  iitthe  branches  S(p, 

iW'^'^^^/^wliencc,  and  iifhilher  flouin  aaQiii,iiitio  mm] 


W&ti    €  X    LIB  R I  S      Z: 
y  WILLI  Rm  5TILWeLL»g_ 

•    SemPLe  ^^^ 


-1 


MODERN  ENGLISH 
STATESMEN 


MODERN  ENGLISH 
STATESMEN    ^     ^ 


By 
G.  R.  STIRLING  TAYLOR 


NEW    YORK 

ROBERT  M.  McBRIDE  &  COMPANY 

1 92 1 


Copyright,       1921,       by 
Robert    M.    McBride    &    Co. 


Printed       in       the 

United     States     of     America 


blished,        1921 


rv\ 


CONTENTS 

FAez 

CHAPTER    I 

STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP  ....  I 

CHAPTER    II 
OLIVER    CROMWELL ^7 

CHAPTER    III 
THE    WALPOLES 7^ 

CHAPTER   IV 
THE  PITT  FAMILY :  AND  ITS  MYTHS  .        .        .        .        I20 

CHAPTER   V 
EDMUND    BURKE 1 65 

CHAPTER   VI 
BENJAMIN  DISRAELI,  EARL  OF  BEACONSFIELD   .         .        210 

INDEX 263 


20SM53 


MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

CHAPTER  I 

STATESMEN    AND    STATESMANSHIP 

IT  is  one  of  the  unsolved  problems  of  history  whether 
great  statesmen  rule  their  country  or  whether  they 
merely  register  the  desires  and  opinions  of  their  age, 
their  race  and  their  nation.  It  is  the  question  whether 
great  men  govern  or  obey.  It  is  no  answer  to  produce 
a  royal  proclamation  or  a  chancellor's  ruling,  or  even 
the  statute  book  of  an  elected  parliament.  The  funda- 
mental mystery  still  remains,  whether  any  man  or  parlia- 
ment, however  despotic  or  however  wise,  has  ever  made 
a  people  do  anything  that  was  outside  the  tradition  of  the 
race.  It  is  the  problem  whether  racial  or  national  tra- 
dition is  not  altogether  more  powerful  than  the  orders 
of  the  most  masterful  government  that  ever  existed.  Did 
Augustus  order  the  Roman  people  to  obey  him  as  their 
emperor,  or  did  the  united  impulse  of  the  republican 
citizens  order  Augustus  to  organize  them  as  an  Empire? 
Would  it  not  be  near  the  truth  to  say  that  the  people  of 
Rome  had  already  made  themselves  into  a  despotism 
long  before  they  allowed  Augustus  to  act  so  openly? 
Did  the  late  German  Emperor  rule  the  Germans,  or  did 
he  carry  out  the  imperious  will  of  that  race?  Were  they 
servile  to  him,  or  was  he  servile  to  them?     Did  Chatham 

I 


2       MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

force  the  English  people  to  build  an  Empire,  or  did  he 
merely  act  as  their  organizing  agent?  Do  statesmen  ex- 
press their  own  will,  or  the  will  of  those  who  seem  to 
be  their  subjects?  The  problem  is  put  into  the  balance 
almost  every  time  that  we  weigh  a  historical  fact. 

The  question  may  never  be  answered  in  any  absolute 
way:  and  this  for  the  very  good  reason  that  there  may 
be  no  conclusive  answer.  It  is  only  the  timekeeper  and 
the  drill-sergeant  who  have  rigid  rules  of  life.  Nature, 
being  neither  a  pedant  nor  a  bureaucrat,  has  a  happy  way 
of  doing  the  best  with  each  case  as  it  comes  along.  Some- 
times the  autocrat  has  his  will  for  a  time;  and  then  the 
rising  of  a  people  will  toss  him  away  as  easily  as  a  wave 
tosses  a  cork.  There  is  a  continual  giving  and  taking  be- 
tween a  people  and  those  who  govern  them.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  make  a  case  for  the  victory  of  one  side  which 
quite  excludes  the  other.  Nevertheless  the  evidence 
would  seem  to  point  to  the  ultimate  supremacy  of  national 
tradition — which  is  national  will — over  the  will  of  the 
statesman.  A  governor  can  survive  for  a  time;  it  may 
be  that  for  a  whole  lifetime  he  may  impose  his  rule 
against  the  wishes  of  his  subjects.  There  are  cases  where 
a  series  of  despots  have  ruled  against  the  will  of  a  race; 
but  sooner  or  later,  the  racial  command  pushes  its  way 
through  the  weight  of  authority  above.  Nevertheless, 
the  argument  again  (with  the  uncertain  indecision  of 
Nature  once  more)  moves  across  to  the  other  side,  when 
wc  have  to  admit  that  although  a  nation  usually  has  the 
power  to  overthrow  an  autocratic  statesman — be  he  king 
or  banker — yet,  since  there  cannot  be  cause  without  effect, 
the  nation  that  emerges  is  not  quite  the  same  that  it 
would  have  been  had  it  never  been  submerged  under  the 


STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP    3 

despotism.  To  that  extent  the  great  autocrats  win.  But, 
again,  in  the  final  summing  up  it  is  probable  that  the 
effect  of  the  personal  ruler  is  as  the  blowing  of  a  con- 
trary wind  against  an  ocean  tide:  it  blows  the  breakers 
into  whiter  foam;  it  cannot  stop  the  irresistible  flow.  A 
book  on  statesmen  is,  after  all,  merely  a  book  on  foam 
and  not  on  tides.  But  if  they  are  foam,  they  arc  the 
result  of  tides;  and,  to  that  extent,  they  are  symbolic. 

It  is  not  generally  recognized  that  the  action  of  a  states- 
man may  be  very  spectacular  on  the  page  of  history,  and 
yet  he  may  have  done  nothing  but  touch  the  surface  of 
the  national  life.  The  vast  bulk  of  human  life,  in  a  broad 
sense,  has  been  almost  untouched  by  the  laws  and  ordi- 
nances declared  by  ruling  men  and  representative  assem- 
blies. One  talks  loosely  of  despotism,  but  it  may  be  very 
blatant  and  yet  not  go  very  deep.  An  Englishman  who 
knew  Russia  under  the  autocratic  Czar  said  that  there 
was  more  individual  liberty  in  that  country  than  in  Eng- 
land. There  was  probably  a  touch  of  paradox  in  that 
statement;  but  there  was  certainly  more  than  a  touch  of 
truth  also.  For  the  greater  part  of  its  career  the  human 
race  progressed  without  much  of  what  we  should  call 
"government"  to-day.  Government  is  a  comparatively 
modern  idea;  and  to  that  extent  statesmanship  is  only  a 
modern  trade.  It  is  a  trade  that  has  been  growing  since 
the  Renaissance  with  alarming  speed;  and  perhaps  al- 
ready it  is  untrue  to  say  that  it  does  not  affect  the  funda- 
mentals of  human  existence;  but  it  is  only  recently  that 
it  has  become  untrue.  Even  in  the  eighteenth  century  the 
Chathams  and  the  Burkes  and  their  kind  could  make 
mighty  displays  in  the  Houses  of  Parliament  and  yet  have 
comparatively  little  effect  on  the  lives  of  the  citizens  in 


4       MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

general.  They  had  scarcely  thought  of  such  coercive 
measures  as  Conscription  Acts,  Insurance  Acts,  and  the 
dozens  of  ways  in  which  the  State  now  invades  the  Eng- 
lishman's home  that  was  once  his  castle.  It  is  only  dur- 
ing the  last  half-century  that  the  modern  politicians  have 
realized  that  by  cleverly  drafted  laws  and  a  faithful  army 
and  police  force  they  may  reduce  the  ordinary  citizen  to 
a  more  helpless  creature  than  a  black  slave. 

If  one  gets  away  from  the  popular  notion  of  the  ortho- 
dox history-books  that  statesmen  have  been  the  chief 
driving  force  in  our  national  life;  if  one  can  regard  the 
whole  scene  of  history  with  an  unprejudiced  eye;  then 
kings  and  governors  will  still  take  a  real  and  permanent 
place  in  the  picture — but  they  will  stand  as  mere  figures 
in  a  landscape,  as  it  were,  with  mountains  and  rivers  of 
national  traditions  far  bigger  than  themselves.  English 
history  will  be  seen  to  be  the  story  of  a  race,  and  not  a 
national  portrait  gallery.  It  would  not  be  too  extreme 
a  statement  to  say  that  statesmen  are  only  the  trivial  side 
of  history.  It  would  be  almost  possible  to  write  an  in- 
telligible account  of  the  development  of  England  without 
mentioning  personal  names  except  at  very  occasional  mo- 
ments. For  example,  before  the  Conquest  it  might  be 
necessary  to  mention  Alfred  the  Great,  and  perhaps  Cnut, 
with  Bede  and  Dunstan;  but  the  main  early  story,  at  least, 
might  be  told  in  that  impersonal  way  which  will  seem 
natural  when  we  remember  that  we  are  dealing  with  a 
nation  which  scarcely  as  yet  made  laws  in  parliaments 
and  had  not  yet  invented  politics  and  politicians.  The 
people  of  those  days  obeyed  the  rules  of  their  own  tra- 
ditions, as  they  were  maintained  in  their  own  local  courts : 
they  had  scarcely  yet  heard  of  kings'  courts  and  their 


STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP    5 

justices.  The  Norman  Conquest  itself  could  almost  be 
told  without  mentioning  the  name  of  William;  for  he 
was  only  one  of  a  group  of  freebooter  feudal  lords  who 
were  searching  for  lands  and  plunder.  But  though  we 
could  easily  tell  the  whole  truth  about  the  Conquest  with- 
out mentioning  the  leader,  yet,  strangely  enough,  it  would 
be  necessary  to  introduce  this  William  as  a  distinctive 
individual  when  we  had  to  tell  how  he  conquered,  not  our 
Anglo-Saxon  selves,  but  his  own  unruly  barons.  His 
conquest  of  England  was  mainly  a  part  in  the  collective 
role  of  a  military  group  more  highly  skilled  in  arms  than 
the  opposing  native  tribe.  It  is  unnecessary  to  remem- 
ber the  names  of  the  British  generals  who  have  crushed 
the  hundred  and  one  native  races  in  our  pursuit  of  the 
British  Empire;  and  William  was  merely  a  general  of  a 
superior  tribe,  so  far  as  the  actual  invasion  went.  But 
his  crushing  of  the  baronial  independence  was  far  more 
an  act  depending  on  his  personal  will  and  individual 
energy:  it  was  the  policy  of  a  specific  man. 

So  one  might  continue  pointing  out  isolated  individual 
leaks  which  must  stand  out  as  islands  in  the  sea  of  na- 
tional history.  As  a  romance,  as  a  way  of  attracting  the 
attention  of  the  young  learner,  there  are  thousands  of 
names  worth  remembering  in  the  history  of  England. 
As  a  scientific  statement  of  sociological  development,  it 
might  all  be  told  with  very  few  personalities.  Such  as 
Henry  II  and  Edward  I  might  justly  assert  their  right  to 
a  distinctive  place :  and  Becket  and  Simon  de  Montford 
would  have  to  be  there:  as  Lanfranc  and  Anselm  might 
have  to  be  mentioned  beside  the  early  Norman  kings. 
But  why  should  we  trouble  to  think  of  the  names  of  the 
dozens   of   self-seeking,   quarrelsome   lords   who   called 


6       MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

themselves  kings  and  statesmen  during  the  later  Plan- 
tagenets  and  the  Wars  of  the  Roses?  Warwick  the 
Kingmaker  was,  like  Henry  IV,  little  more  than  a  man 
seeking  for  place  and  lands;  and  it  is  not  scientific  to  call 
the  plans  of  an  adventurer  by  the  dignified  name  of  states- 
manship. On  the  other  hand,  Edward  IV  and  Richard 
III,  although  still  adventurers,  begin  a  new  line  of  more 
individualist  kings;  and  all  the  Tudors  except  Edward 
VI  need  naming  and  explaining.  By  the  days  of  the 
Tudors  it  was  becoming  the  more  usual  habit  to  rule 
England  by  instructions  from  Westminster  and  White- 
hall; and  the  personality  of  the  men  who  gave  these 
orders  was  therefore  of  more  importance  than  when  a 
monarch  was  mainly  a  military  leader. 

From  this  time  personal  names  are  thicker  on  the 
pages  of  our  history-books,  for  government  had  now 
become  a  profession,  and  was  daily  becoming  a  more  and 
more  successful  one — from  the  point  of  view  of  the  gov- 
ernors. They  were  getting  more  and  more  successful 
in  making  the  people  obey  the  laws  that  the  politicians 
made.  The  English  were  gradually  getting  more  laws, 
and,  on  the  whole,  less  freedom.  But  even  now  there  is 
no  reason  why  the  personalities  of  these  later  days  should 
cumber  our  history  to  the  extent  they  do.  Indeed,  they 
rather  hamper  the  tale.  The  vitally  important  story  of 
the  Reformation — when  a  gang  of  adventurers  seized 
the  Church  lands  in  the  same  way  that  William  and  his 
Norman  knights  had  seized  their  plunder — this  funda- 
mental change  in  English  policy,  from  mediaeval  to 
modern,  does  not  peculiarly  attach  itself  to  any  individ- 
ual. To  discuss  Henry's  fancy  for  Anne  Boleyn  is  only 
to  put  the  student  on  the  wrong  tack.     Or  to  name  the 


STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP    7 

theologians  is  to  assume  that  a  religious  principle  was 
at  stake,  when  it  scarcely  was.  Whereas  we  should  be 
concentrating  the  whole  attention  on  the  crowd  of  insig- 
nificant Court  officials  who  were  feathering  the  nests  of 
themselves  and  their  friends  out  of  the  Church  estates. 
They  were  an  impersonal  class — powerful  only  when 
taken  in  bulk.  Thomas  Cromwell  was  only  one  of  these 
adventurers,  and,  except  as  a  convenient  symbol,  there 
is  no  real  need  to  mention  even  him.  William  Cecil, 
Lord  Burghley,  a  few  years  later,  stands  in  a  unique  posi- 
tion, as  we  shall  see :  he  was  a  man  who  really  did  govern. 
But  if  the  list  of  personal  names  grows  fuller  as  his- 
tory continues,  yet  it  must  be  carefully  noted  that,  al- 
though a  statesman  may  make  many  new  laws  and  may 
get  them  obeyed  by  the  people,  still  it  is  possible  that 
these  laws  may  remain  only  on  the  surface  of  the  national 
life.  Think  of  all  the  violent  legal  changes  during  the 
great  civil  war  of  the  Stuart  period — changes  expressed 
by  Act  of  Parliament  and  enforced  by  governors'  com- 
mands. Then  realize  how  insignificant  all  these  were  in 
affecting  the  national  life,  compared  with  the  entirely 
unofficial  invention  of  a  few  factory  machines  during  the 
second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Of  course,  had 
it  had  not  been  for  Oliver  Cromwell  and  his  dismal  men, 
the  trading  and  manufacturing  classes  would  not  have 
been  so  well  prepared  for  the  Industrial  Revolution;  if 
they  had  not  first  successfully  gone  through  the  political 
revolution  of  the  Stuart  days,  they  would  not  have  been 
ready  to  effect  the  far  greater  changes  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Can  any  one  claim  that  the  Great  Charter  of 
John  has  had  as  much  effect  on  England  as  the  develop- 
ment of  our  coal  and  iron?     The  quarrel  betwee.    the 


8       MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

Lancastrians  and  Yorkists  was  merely  a  back-street  brawl 
compared  with  the  struggle  between  merchants  for  the 
conquest  of  our  economic  life.  The  whole  Statute  Book 
has  not  affected  our  social  system  as  much  as  the  invention 
of  steam  power  and  the  telegraph.  Political  affairs  are 
only  the  secondary  effect  of  industrial  and  private  busi- 
ness. The  point  to  grasp  at  the  moment  is  the  fact  that 
it  is  not  mainly  by  the  acts  and  administrations  of  states- 
men that  a  nation  is  most  drastically  affected.  A  race  is 
usually  only  radically  impressed  by  causes  of  which  the 
governors  are  not  aware  until  everything  is  settled.  The 
statesman  is  usually  in  the  position  of  a  policeman  who 
arrives  when  the  fight  is  over.  Most  of  the  important 
things  that  happen  in  a  State  are  begun  and  finished  by 
people  who  pay  as  little  attention  to  rulers  as  rulers  pay 
to  them.  We  must,  if  we  are  to  get  the  main  propor- 
tions right,  get  it  firmly  in  the  mind  that  the  sphere  of 
statesmanship  may  be  on  the  top,  and  therefore  in  a  very 
prominent  position;  yet  it  does  not  by  any  means  follow 
that  its  influence  at  all  corresponds  to  its  display — for 
much  the  same  reason  that  a  regimental  band  is  not  the 
most  important  part  of  the  regiment. 

It  scarcely  seems  fair  to  the  rest  of  this  book  to  explain 
at  such  length  that  its  subject  is  unimportant.  Yet  the 
argument  has  only  attempted  to  put  statesmen  in  their 
proper  place — not  to  dismiss  them.  Quite  apart  from 
their  personal  merits,  they  are  such  useful  symbols  of 
national  movements.  To  borrow  from  Voltaire,  if  they 
had  not  existed  it  would  have  been  necessary  to  invent 
them.  The  ones  chosen  for  this  volume  have  been 
selected  because  they  stand  for  great  tendencies  far 
greater  than  themselves.     Cromwell  is  chosen  because  he 


STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP    9 

seems  the  first  representative  of  modern  statesmanship. 
William  Cecil  (in  many  ways  the  most  serious  and  most 
accomplished  statesman  that  England  ever  possessed) 
might  be  put  first  for  many  reasons;  but,  as  will  be  dis- 
cussed later,  it  is  better  to  regard  him  as  the  last  of  the 
old  school,  instead  of  the  first  of  the  new.  Cromwell 
marks  the  final  blowing  out  of  the  Middle  Ages,  which 
gave  their  last  flicker  with  Charles  Stuart.  When  the 
head  of  that  strange  figure  fell  in  Whitehall  it  marked 
very  dramatically  the  end  of  the  old  era.  History  has  no 
hard  boundary  lines;  but  man's  mind,  being  limited  and 
easily  confused,  must  fix  dates  which  will  keep  him  from 
chaotic  wandering.  The  day  of  Charles  I's  execution  is 
one  of  those  most  useful  dates.  The  mediaeval  system 
had  been  a  long  time  dying;  but  until  Charles  was  be- 
headed there  was  something  of  it  left.  And  his  chief 
executioner  is  the  most  fitting  figure  to  express  the  new 
system  that  was  to  take  its  place.  The  mediasval  Mon- 
archy, based  to  a  large  extent  on  the  nation,  gave  way 
to  the  modern  Oligarchy,  based  on  a  privileged  class. 
There  was  a  sense  in  which  Charles  had  stood  for  the 
whole  people;  and,  especially  during  the  eleven  years  of 
his  absolute  rule  without  a  parliament,  he  had  somewhat 
definitely  been  the  protector  of  the  poor  against  the  rich. 
If  Cromwell  and  the  Commonwealth  can  be  generalized 
at  all,  it  can  only  be  said  that  this  party  stood  for  the 
supremacy  of  the  rich.  The  Commonwealth  was  the  tri- 
umphant government  of  the  merchants  and  the  smaller 
county  gentry,  who  had  risen  on  the  raided  wealth  of 
the  mediaeval  Church.  The  complete  triumph  of  the 
merchant  was  not  to  come  until  the  days  when  Robert 
Peel,  the  son  of  a  merchant  prince,  rose  to  be  the  Chief 


10     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

Minister  of  England.  But  that  was  not  to  be  until  the 
Reform  Act  of  1832  had  put  the  middle  trading  class  in 
supreme  possession  of  the  franchise.  From  Cromwell  to 
Peel  the  merchant  and  manufacturer  and  small  landlord 
(that  is,  the  middle  class)  had  been  continually  growing 
in  power;  but  it  was  not  yet,  as  a  general  rule,  considered 
seemly  for  any  one  except  a  member  of  the  aristocracy 
to  hold  office.  There  was  still  a  vague  behef  that  blue 
blood  had  some  inherent  right  to  rule.  There  was  still 
a  distrust  of  the  political  adventurer,  carried  to  such  a 
degree  that  we  find  the  nation  trusting  the  political  fool — 
but,  after  all,  the  fool  does  less  harm  by  his  folly  than 
the  knave  by  his  wits.  So  although  Cromwell  by  the 
swords  of  his  Ironside  troopers  began  the  process  which 
put  the  middle  classes  into  power  as  the  basis  of  modern 
England,  yet  for  generations  to  come  an  aristocratic 
oligarchy  governed  on  behalf  of  the  new  commercialists; 
and  took  a  very  liberal  share  of  the  spoils  of  wealth,  and 
almost  all  the  offices  of  State,  in  return  for  their  services. 
The  three  succeeding  figures  of  this  book  are  from  the 
period  of  the  aristocratic  oligarchy,  which  was  to  give 
way  to  the  plutocratic  oligarchy  in  the  lifetime  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel.  Robert  Walpole  is  chosen  partly  because 
he  is  the  finest  example  of  themselves  that  the  Oligarchs 
have  to  offer.  In  Walpole  they  rose  to  their  first  worthy 
success;  and  it  was  a  success  which  they  never  repeated 
with  as  much  intellect  or  as  much  moral  sanity.  Walpole 
was  the  first  and  best  balanced  statesman  that  the  oli- 
garchy produced.  Of  course,  many  facts  must  be  ad- 
mitted against  him.  He  did  not  rise  very  far  above  the 
somewhat  selfish  ideals  of  his  period  and  his  class.  He 
was  in  power  as  the  First  Minister  of  a  nation  whose 


STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP      ii 

ruling  class  was  primarily  interested  in  the  making  of 
trading  profits  and  the  raising  of  rents.  Cromwell  had 
finally  decided  that  the  merchant  adventurers  of  the 
Tudor  foundation  were  to  be  given  a  free  head  in  Eng- 
lish social  development;  the  middle  class  was  established 
in  power,  and  remained  there  even  though  Charles  II 
came  back.  By  Walpole's  day  these  merchants  had 
enormously  increased  in  influence:  the  City  of  London 
had  even  more  to  do  with  the  Revolution  of  1688  than 
with  the  Great  Rebellion  against  Charles  I :  and  William 
of  Orange  gave  more  attention  to  the  invitation  he  got 
from  the  City  magistrates  than  he  gave  to  the  welcome 
of  the  peers.  Walpole  was,  above  all  else,  the  expres- 
sion of  a  merchants'  England.  But  there  was  a  broad 
dignity  about  his  government  which  remembered  that 
there  was  a  national  price  which  it  was  unwise  to  pay  for 
the  benefits  of  mercantile  success.  He  accepted  the  fact 
that  fate  had  made  England  a  great  trading  community; 
but  he  showed  no  intention  of  pressing  that  development 
beyond  its  due  growth.  He  was  prepared  to  help  Eng- 
lish merchants  to  get  their  fair  share  of  the  wealth  of  the 
world:  he  was  prepared  to  help  them  to  trade  as  honest 
men.  He  was  not  ready  to  turn  the  strength  of  the 
British  people  into  an  organized  scheme  for  playing  the 
part  of  pirates  to  the  universe.  He  protested  against 
fighting  Spain  just  because  a  set  of  City  merchants  saw 
their  way  to  plundering  Spanish  commerce;  he  only  gave 
way  to  the  popular  wishes  with  the  cynicism  of  a  gentle- 
man who  finds  he  has  become  hopelessly  involved  in  a 
disreputable  trading  company.  The  day  may  even  yet 
come  when  his  famous  prophecy,  "They  will  be  wringing 
their  hands  soon,"  will  come  true :  when  the  British  Em- 


12     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

pire  may  repentantly  admit  that  it  has  been  too  un- 
bounded in  its  greed,  and  that  the  wealth  of  the  world 
is  not  worth  its  envy  and  contempt.  Robert  Walpole 
was  the  last  great  English  statesman  who  had  that  rest- 
ful sense  of  social  development  which  has  been  lost  in  the 
tumult  of  modern  government.  He  carried  into  the 
modern  period  that  conception  of  society  which  was  al- 
most the  main  characteristic  of  the  mediaeval  system: 
namely,  that  the  growth  of  a  people,  like  the  growth  of  a 
child,  is  bounded  by  natural  laws,  and  cannot  be  forced 
by  Acts  of  Parliament  or  regulations  of  departments  of 
State.  Walpole  would  have  allowed  the  trade  of  Eng- 
land to  grow  in  this  natural  manner:  he  did  not  believe 
in  sudden  outbursts  of  energy,  just  as  an  intelligent  man 
does  not  believe  that  an  infant  can  be  forced  to  full 
stature  in  a  3^ear.  He  would  have  had  England  grow, 
most  certainly — but  with  dignity  and  peace.  The  chaos 
of  war  he  regarded  with  the  contempt  of  a  wise  man,  and 
the  practice  of  mercantile  piracy  with  the  aversion  of  a 
gentleman.  He  was  one  of  the  few  modem  statesmen 
who  have  shown  more  respect  to  the  traditions  of  their 
race  than  to  the  intrigues  of  those  unrestful  beings  who 
imagine  that  their  passing  thoughts  and  ambitions  are  the 
wisdom  of  eternity.  Walpole  had  no  desire  for  great 
changes :  he  only  wanted  to  take  the  next  step,  and  to 
take  it  with  skill  and  dignity.  Indeed,  he  was  a  curious 
survival  of  an  older  school  of  thought,  one  who  would 
have  been  better  suited  to  the  age  of  the  late  Plantagenets. 
The  Pitts  have  been  chosen  as  the  expression  of  every- 
thing that  Walpole  was  not.  As  a  family,  they  are  a 
typical  example  of  the  modern  English  ruling  class. 
They  rose  into  wealth  as  the  heirs  of  that  somewhat  un- 


STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP      13 

scrupulous  Indian  trader,  Diamond  Pitt;  and  they  won 
their  right  to  office  by  a  clever  linking  (by  marriage) 
with  the  older  aristocracy  of  England.  They  therefore 
represented  both  the  mercantile  basis  of  the  government 
of  that  period,  and  also  the  bluer  blood  of  the  families 
that  acted  as  the  agents  of  this  middle-class  plutocracy. 
The  mental,  moral  and  physical  character  of  the  elder 
William  Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham,  cuts  across  every  line  of 
his  rival  Walpole.  Pitt  was  excitable  and  a  bundle  of 
hysterical  emotions;  he  was  unscrupulous  and  ungenerous 
in  his  grasping  at  power;  K.,  was  rotten-timbered  in  phys- 
ical structure,  and  his  brain  was  more  than  once  beyond 
normal  control.  Walpole  had  been  content  to  develop 
his  country  with  sober  care.  Pitt  dreamed  of  the  build- 
ing of  the  British  Empire  with  the  terrific  force  of  a 
nightmare.  To  make  the  Empire  larger  and  wealtiiier 
became  a  monomania  in  his  mind.  The  world  in  his 
imagination  became  a  colossal  prize-ring,  in  which  he 
was  to  drive  every  opponent  over  the  ropes — with  as 
much  blood  spilt  as  possible.  His  method  was  physical 
force;  which  is  not  surprising,  for  he  did  not  possess  the 
brains  necessary  for  diplomacy  or  systematic  thought. 
He  believed  in  war,  which  is  naturally  the  first  resource 
of  the  dull-witted,  as  it  is  the  last  hope  of  the  wise.  The 
Pitts  stood  for  conquest  by  war,  while  Walpole  had  in- 
sisted that  what  could  not  be  won  by  peaceful  methods 
was  rarely  worth  the  getting.  Walpole  was  exceedingly 
balanced  in  his  intellect;  Chatham  was  entirely  at  the 
mercy  of  his  unstable  emotions.  Walpole  wanted  to 
leave  the  nation  to  follow  the  course  of  its  natural  social 
growth  in  an  orderly  and  unforced  way.  Chatham  had 
the  temperament  of  a  gambler  on  the  Stock  Exchange  or 


14     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

an  American  hustler;  he  regarded  the  British  Empire 
as  a  thing  to  be  "developed";  as  a  speculator  regards 
the  fields  and  mines  of  a  new  colony.  With  all  his 
pompous  manners  and  imperial  pose,  Chatham  was  at 
heart  a  company  promoter,  who  thought  he  saw  a 
good  thing  in  the  English  race  as  an  investment.  He 
was  by  no  means  sordid  or  selfish  in  his  objects;  he 
was  that  which  was  a  good  deal  worse  in  a  statesman — 
full  of  heroic  and  poetical  ideals,  which  made  the  rather 
sentimental  Englishmen  think  that  they  were  led  by  a 
genius.  Whereas  they  were  being  misled  (as  we  shall 
find  when  we  examine  the  evidence)  by  something  not 
far  from  a  mental  degenerate,  in  the  medical  sense.  The 
younger  Pitt  was  the  true  son  of  his  father  Chatham, 
and  completes  the  family  picture.  He  was  not  so  pushing 
a  salesman  as  his  self-made  father;  and  he  had  to  depend 
more  on  his  better  education  and  on  his  inherited  posi- 
tion. If  he  had  not  been  the  son  of  the  Earl  of  Chatham 
it  is  safe  to  say  that  history  would  have  known  little  or 
nothing  of  his  existence.  The  economists  have  proved 
that  he  was  an  incompetent  financier;  and  the  military 
experts  have  proved  that  he  was  more  than  an  incompe- 
tent bungler  at  the  game  of  war.  It  was  only  as  his 
father's  son  that  he  crept  into  the  history-books,  and  has 
continued  to  defy  criticism  because  the  historians  have 
usually  preferred  to  copy  each  other's  opinions  instead 
of  valuing  the  facts  for  themselves.  The  Pitt  Myth  is 
one  of  those  interesting  superstitions  that  have  gripped 
the  human  mind.  It  is  one  of  the  clearest  examples  of 
the  social  law  that  men  are  not  so  much  controlled  by  their 
intellect  as  by  their  emotions.  It  also  illustrates  the 
troublesome  fact  that  an  accidental  error  of  thought  can 


STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP      15 

become  by  inheritance  and  age  more  permanent  than  the 
truth.  The  Pitts  are  the  type  of  the  modern  statesmen 
who  imagine  that  a  race  can  be  changed  by  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment, manipulated  by  smart  administrators,  and  driven 
to  its  destiny  by  brilliant  soldiering.  They  represent  the 
change  from  progress  by  orderly  national  tradition  to 
the  acrobatic  feats  of  individual  energy.  They  are  a 
clear  example  of  the  process  by  which  government  has 
passed  from  being  the  expression  of  the  desire  of  the 
racial  majority  (which  is  near  democracy)  to  the  impos- 
ing of  the  will  of  the  governors  (which  is  certainly  autoc- 
racy, and  usually  tyranny). 

Edmund  Burke  was  not  really  a  statesman  in  the  sense 
of  being  a  politician  or  administrator.  He  did  compara- 
tively little  in  Parliament  or  in  office — he  never  rose  to 
Cabinet  rank.  He  was  a  political  pamphleteer  and  a 
literary  orator,  who  supplied  a  certain  intellectual  pad- 
ding to  the  real  politicians,  who  were  not  too  well  supplied 
with  brains;  and,  when  they  possessed  them,  were  too  full 
of  intrigues  for  office  to  spend  time  over  mere  matters  of 
principle  or  problems  of  scientific  government.  Let  it 
not  be  supposed  that  Burke  represented  intellect.  He 
was  a  bundle  of  emotions,  like  the  Earl  of  Chatham; 
but  they  were  emotions  tinged  with  historical  facts  and 
logical  argument;  whereas  when  Chatham  ceased  to  be 
hysterical  he  only  too  frequently  became  stupid.  But 
Burke  had  the  makings  of  a  better  man;  he  is  an  inter- 
esting example  of  a  young  man  who  was  ruined  by  going 
into  politics,  when  he  might  have  spent  a  harmless  life 
as  a  country  parson  or  a  minor  poet.  He  was  a  senti- 
mentalist of  the  first  rank;  and  his  chief  work  in  politics 
was   to   deck  out  a   vast  amount   of  shallow   folly  and 


1 6     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

disreputable  intrigue  in  the  admirable  colours  of  a  florid 
literary  style  and  a  question-begging  logic.  Burke  was 
one  of  the  men  who  become  the  unconscious  tools  of  pro- 
fessional politicians.  The  Whig  "principles"  that  had  so 
cleverly  tricked  England  in  1688  were  getting  rather 
soiled  by  the  days  of  George  III.  It  was  Burke  who 
re-dressed  them  and  gave  them  another  career  in  the 
great  work  of  making  the  English  nation  believe  that  its 
modern  politicians  are  serious  statesmen.  Burke  is  an 
example  of  the  vast  harm  that  can  be  done  by  lending 
moral  and  intellectual  support  to  a  class  that  is  generally 
incapable  of  using  such  help.  He  was  not  a  great  man 
either  in  intellect  or  in  morals;  but  he  was  great  enough 
to  give  his  friends  too  much  credit  for  possessing  both. 
He  is  perhaps  chiefly  interesting  as  an  example  of  the 
half-intelligent,  half-honest  persons  who  are  always  in- 
truding with  conviction  and  enthusiasm  into  political  life. 
The  main  result  of  their  endeavours  is  that  the  politicians 
are  able  to  operate  behind  a  smoke  screen  of  honester 
men.  Not  that  Burke  failed  to  affect  history:  it  is  fair 
to  suggest  that  his  action  against  the  French  Revolution 
modified  the  history  of  Europe  to  this  present  day.  Had 
it  not  been  for  Burke's  assistance,  it  is  doubtful  whether 
the  politicians  would  ever  have  persuaded  the  English 
people  to  struggle  until  they  had  crushed  the  French 
Revolution.  It  was  Burke's  shrill  shrieking  (like  a 
philosopher  in  a  nightmare)  that  persuaded  not  only 
England,  but  Europe  also,  that  the  Revolution  was  alto- 
gether evil  and  must  be  altogether  broken.  In  other 
words,  had  it  not  been  for  his  utter  failure  to  judge  the 
Revolution  with  the  calmness  of  a  philosopher  and  the 
impartiality  of  a  historian,  Europe  would  have  seen  that 


STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP      17 

there  was  much  that  was  inevitable  and  necessary  in  the 
rising  of  the  French  people  against  their  over-centralized 
bureaucracy.  Europe  would  have  seen  that  the  crimes  of 
the  Revolution  were  the  deeds  of  a  small  gang  of  scoun- 
drels and  fanatics  who  come  to  the  top  in  every  revolu- 
tion; and  that  the  men  who  made  the  Terror  no  more 
represented  France  than  the  last  sensational  murderer 
represents  his  race.  Had  it  not  been  for  Burke's  melo- 
dramatic rhetoric  it  would  have  been  obvious  that  the 
kings  of  Europe  were  not  concerned  with  the  salvation 
of  the  French  (as  they  pretended),  but  were  only  anxious 
to  plunder  a  nation  when  it  was  weakened  by  a  struggle 
with  internal  anarchy.  It  was  Burke's  unbalanced  hys- 
teria that  probably  turned  the  scale,  that  encouraged 
the  royal  and  political  adventurers  of  Europe  to  attack 
France,  and  therefore  gave  the  French  militarists  and 
rogues  the  chance  they  were  seeking — an  excuse  for 
appealing  to  the  French  nation  to  defend  its  frontiers  by 
invading  the  lands  of  its  neighbours  first.  Hence  the 
calamity  of  the  Revolutionary  Wars;  hence  the  greater 
calamity  of  Napoleon.  If  any  one  man  was  guilty  of 
turning  the  Revolution  from  a  noble  beginning  to  an 
ignoble  conclusion,  it  was  Edmund  Burke,  the  sentimen- 
talist. He  is  an  example  of  the  fact  that  the  well- 
meaning  man  can  do  more  harm  than  the  rogue  when  he 
meddles  with  public  affairs. 

As  for  Benjamin  Disraeli,  he,  like  Burke,  did  little  in 
politics  proper.  He  was  certainly  Prime  Minister  of 
England  twice;  he  was  one  of  the  most  audaciously 
brilliant  figures  that  the  Houses  of  Parliament  have  seen. 
But  his  political  deeds  were  only  the  idle  moments  of 
his  life.     Disraeli  was  a  thinker;  and  what  he  thought 


1 8     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

he  put  Into  books,  and  rarely  translated  Into  the  deed 
of  an  Act  of  Parliament.  He  was  perhaps  the  most 
brilliant  thinker  of  his  age;  and  he  was  great  because  he 
refused  to  be  original  and  went  back  to  the  thoughts  of 
older  days.  Disraeli  was  the  only  modern  statesman 
who  has  had  the  courage  to  tell  his  nation  that  It  was 
rotten  from  the  foundation.  His  Popanilla  Is  the  most 
amazingly  clever  burlesque  of  modern  society  that  has 
been  written — which  perhaps  is  the  reason  why  there 
has  been  almost  a  universal  agreement  not  to  read  it.  It 
is  one  of  the  really  dangerous  books  that  threaten  to 
undermine  the  foundations  of  modern  life.  It  Is  the 
sort  of  book  that  would  be  suppressed  under  the  Defence 
of  the  Realm  Act — if  the  censors  had  the  brains  to 
grasp  its  meaning.  There  would,  however,  be  the  em- 
barrassment that  it  was  written  by  Queen  Victoria's 
favourite  Tory  Prime  Minister.  Disraeli  Is  chosen  as  a 
type  of  modern  English  statesmen  not  because  he  is 
really  a  type,  but  mainly  because  he  is  almost  a  unique 
specimen.  He  was  so  much  wiser  than  his  colleagues, 
and  so  much  more  advanced  than  the  people  of  his  time, 
that  he  could  do  scarcely  anything  In  politics,  except 
amaze  Europe  by  his  brilliancy  and  convulse  it  by  his  wit. 
Indeed,  he  had  all  the  qualities  by  which  the  unscrupulous 
adventurer  could  have  fooled  his  generation — had  he 
desired.  But  Disraeli  was  one  of  the  honest  men.  His 
greatest  credit  In  history  Is  that  he  faced  the  people  with 
the  truth  about  themselves — and  then  turned  to  politics 
with  the  cynical  air  of  a  man  who  preferred  to  take  his 
amusement  in  the  House  of  Commons  rather  than  the 
card-room  or  the  racecourse;  because  he  had  brains,  and 
Parliament  gave  him  more  scope  to  use  them.    The  career 


STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP      19 

of  Disraeli  shows  us  why  a  wise  and  honest  man  must 
fail  in  modern  politics — mainly  for  the  reason  that  a  fish 
cannot  live  on  dry  land.  One  must  be  within  the  facts  of 
one's  environment. 

Such  are  the  five  examples  here  chosen  to  represent 
English  modern  statesmanship,  with  the  main  comparison 
between  themselves.  But  it  is  really  more  important  to 
see  where  they  stand  as  against  the  main  background  of 
English  history  and  English  politicians.  It  is  necessary, 
for  one  thing,  to  find  some  general  standard  by  which  to 
compare  the  modern  statesmen  with  the  men  of  the 
earlier  days.  It  will  be  useful  to  determine  why 
Burghley,  the  last  of  the  older  school,  was  so  distinctly 
apart  from  Oliver  Cromwell,  whom  we  have  called  the 
first  of  the  new  men.  Perhaps  one  main  point  of  differ- 
ence can  be  seen  if  the  men  of  the  older  school  are  called 
statesmen,  and  those  of  the  modern  school  are  termed 
politicians;  suggesting  thereby  the  difference  between  a 
skilled  doctor  and  a  quack:  or  the  difference  between 
one  who  rules  and  one  who  talks.  But,  of  course,  the 
statement  would  need  qualifications  to  save  such  men  as 
Cromwell,  Walpole  and  Disraeli  from  the  imputation. 
For  the  vast  bulk  of  the  modern  men  the  term  "politician" 
is  obviously  fitting.  Let  examples  be  taken  at  the  two 
extremities;  compare  Burghley  with  a  politician  of  to- 
day, and  the  justice  of  the  comparison  will  be  admitted. 
Burghley  was  an  exceedingly  skilled  administrator  of  the 
most  technical  kind;  the  State  Papers  of  his  period  are 
covered  with  his  notes.  He  was  not  only  what  we  should 
now  call  Prime  Minister,  he  was  also  permanent  secre- 
tary of  all  the  Government  departments  as  well.  In  the 
most  precise  meaning,   to  the   smallest  detail,   he   ruled 


20     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

England  for  almost  the  whole  of  Elizabeth's  reign — 
until  his  age  forced  him  to  hand  over  the  work  to  his  son. 
Admitting  that  he  never  had  the  intellect  or  the  courage 
to  protest  against  the  stupidity  of  the  Reformation  eco- 
nomic settlement  as  a  whole,  nevertheless  such  an  effective 
accomplishment  of  technical  skill  in  devising  a  national 
policy,  and  ability  to  carry  it  into  practice,  has  not  been 
repeated  in  our  history.  His  policy  has  vitally  affected 
the  history  of  his  country  to  this  day:  and  it  is  conceivable 
that  we  may  even  go  back  to  it  in  many  of  its  details. 

Can  one  imagine  anything  more  remote  from  the  work 
of  the  modern  politicians?  They  spend  their  time  on  the 
public  platform  and  in  the  Houses  of  Parliament.  Their 
main  claim  to  fame  is  their  power  of  speech.  As  regards 
administration,  they  flit  from  department  to  department, 
as  fits  their  political  necessities,  and  scarcely  touch  details 
at  all.  They  are  primarily  orators  and  debaters.  They 
usually  receive  their  policy  from  the  permanent  adminis- 
trators of  their  departments;  and  they  adopt  so  much  of 
it  as  suits  their  intrigues,  so  much  of  it  as  will  bring  them 
again  into  power  at  the  next  election.  They  are  not  so 
much  thinkers  or  administrators  as  gramophones.  They 
reproduce  their  records.  Burghley  was  as  the  poles 
apart  from  such  men.  Do  we  ever  hear  that  he  made 
a  public  speech?  We  do  know  that  he  left  so  many 
State  Papers  that  it  would  be  beyond  belief  that  he 
had  even  seen  them,  if  it  were  not  that  so  many  of 
them  bear  his  own  handwriting.  There  are  over  twelve 
hundred  documents  for  his  seventy-fifth  year  alone,  when 
he  was  almost  past  work.  Mr.  Gladstone,  one  of  the 
modern  statesmen,  was  famous  because  he  wrote  so  many 
postcards,  and  he  also  became  still  more  famous  for  his 


STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP     21 

rhetoric:  indeed,  he  probably  owed  his  position  in 
English  politics  to  his  fine  voice.  In  Burghley's  day  there 
were  higher  tests  than  these. 

We  must  remember,  to  make  the  comparison  quite 
complete,  that  Burghley  was  also  an  accomplished 
scholar.  He  could  write  in  Latin,  French  and  Italian  as 
well  as  he  could  in  English.  How  many  of  our  modern 
statesmen  had  such  an  advantage  during  the  recent 
Paris  Peace  Congress?  But  there  was  a  still  more  funda- 
mentally useful  quality  which  he  possessed:  he  was  incor- 
ruptibly  honest.  That  is,  he  always  considered  the 
interests  of  the  English  nation  before  his  own.  No 
enemy  of  England  even  tried  to  bribe  William  Cecil. 
One  historian  has  told  us  that  he  risked  everything  to 
protect  the  State,  and  many  times  he  risked  much  to  pro- 
tect his  friends  from  unjust  attack.  There  are  still  people 
who  consider  themselves  educated  who  are  roused  to  the 
point  of  irritation  when  it  is  claimed  that  the  Ministers 
of  Queen  Elizabeth  were  probably  as  efficient  and  as 
honest  as  any  who  have  ever  served  this  State.  The 
irritation  is  a  very  interesting  exhibition  of  the  narrow 
and  local  prejudice  of  a  normal  modern  mind.  Not  hav- 
ing the  time  to  consider  the  facts,  or  lacking  the  ability 
to  weigh  them  when  known,  the  modern  man  assumes 
that  everything  is  better  to-day  than  three  hundred  years 
ago;  he  assumes  that  things  must  have  necessarily  "de- 
veloped" or  "evolved"  in  the  meantime.  It  is  to  no 
avail  that  such  an  authority  as  Dr.  Cunningham  tells  us 
that  Burghley  "set  a  very  remarkable  example  of  im- 
peccability. He  was  scrupulously  careful  to  avoid 
profiting  in  any  way  by  his  political  influence,  and  refused 
the  gifts  from  successful  suitors  which  were  at  that  time 


22     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

the  accepted  method  of  making  payments  for  work  done." 
One  could  quote,  at  great  length,  the  same  high  authority 
on  the  subject  of  Burghley's  efficiency;  for  example: 
"The  notes  on  petitions  submitted  to  him  show  how 
carefully  he  read  them,  while  he  sometimes  conducted  a 
Royal  Commission  on  his  own  account,  and  collected 
very  many  papers  containing  expert  opinion  from  various 
quarters.  He  was  constantly  at  work  in  revising  the 
estimates  and  cutting  down  expenses  ...  all  overhauled 
by  him  in  the  hope  of  checking  abuses  and  securing  a 
reasonable  amount  of  honesty."  As  to  his  personal 
honesty,  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography  sums  up: 
"There  is  good  reason  for  believing  that  if  his  father 
had  not  left  him  an  ample  patrimony  he  would  have  died 
as  poor  a  man  as  many  another  of  Elizabeth's  ablest  and 
most  faithful  servants."  Can  the  modern  mind  sincerely 
believe  that  such  a  character  sketch  would  be  true  of  a 
typical  modern  politician?  It  is  a  matter  of  opinion,  of 
course;  but  in  this  case  it  certainly  would  appear  that 
the  opinion  here  expressed  is  on  the  same  side  as  the 
facts.  The  attitude  of  the  normal  "modern"  man  de- 
fending his  centuries  is  rather  like  the  healthy,  if  some- 
what unpolished,  defence  by  the  village  patriots  of  their 
local  cricket  team,  after  it  has  suffered  its  sixth  consecu- 
tive defeat. 

It  is  better  to  face  the  facts;  and  a  calm  perusal  of  the 
history  of  English  statesmanship  forces  to  the  disagree- 
able conclusion  that  there  has  been  a  persistent  lowering 
of  both  the  moral  and  technical  standard  as  time  has 
passed.  It  is  necessary  to  make  it  clear  that  in  this  gen- 
eralization only  the  men  at  the  top  of  the  political  ladder 
arc  considered.     One  is  comparing  the  First  Ministers 


STATESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP     23 

of  the  Middle  Ages  with  the  First  Ministers  of  to-day; 
or,  one  might  say,  the  King's  Council  of  the  past  with 
the   present    Cabinet.      It   is   probable   that   there    is   as 
much,  if  not  more,  efficiency  and  honesty  in  the  average 
public  servant  to-day  than  there  ever  was.     The  criticism 
is   of   that   purely  political   class   which   is   the   peculiar 
product  of  the  modern  period.    To  take  an  extreme  case: 
is  there  anyone  in  the  modern  period   (since  Burghley) 
who  can  equal  Alfred  the  Great  in  the  breadth  of  his 
statesmanship?    Professor  Oman  has  written  :    "Looking 
up  and  down  the  ages  there  is  no  one  but  St.  Louis  of 
France  who  can  be  compared  to  Alfred.   .   .   .  Truly  this 
Alfred  was  no  mere  national  hero,  no  ordinary  'patron 
of  arts  and  letters,'  but  a  man  of  great  ideas,  a  figure  of 
transcendent  energy."     "Alfred  made  history  .   .   .  what 
he  accomplished  was  never  undone."     The  man  who  had 
to  save  his  country  from  being  plundered  by  a  race  of 
pirates,  who  were  on  the  verge  of  capturing  all  England 
for  their  permanent  home,  was  also  the  man  who  laid 
the  foundation  of  the  English  State  and  its  social  ma- 
chinery.   To  quote  Professor  Oman  again:     "This  great 
fighter  and  administrator  was  not  merely  the  victorious 
general  of  a  dozen  campaigns,  the  founder  of  a  navy, 
the  rebuilder  of  the  internal  organization  of  Church  and 
State,  but  also  a  scholar  and  author;  one  who  loved  alike 
the  old  national  poetry  of  his  own  race  and  the  literature 
of  Rome."     Those  were  not  days  when  statesmen  made 
speeches.     There  is  naturally  a  healthy  sense  of  the  im- 
portance of  deeds  not  words  when  an  enemy  is  on  the 
point  of  burning  one  out  of  home  and  fields;  so  perhaps 
it  was   the   Danes   who   taught  Alfred   to   be   practical. 
Anyhow,  "The  moment  he  had  the  power  and  the  leisure, 


24     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

Alfred  set  to  work  to  collect  about  him  the  few  scholars 
who  were  yet  to  be  found  in  England  .  .  .  and  would 
always  contrive  to  have  one  of  them  at  his  side,  for  at 
every  spare  moment  of  night  or  day  he  wished  to  have 
books  read  to  him,  Latin  or  English."  Let  the  reader 
allow  his  mind  to  turn  suddenly  to  the  present  politicians, 
when  they  also  have  just  been  relieved  from  the  urgent 
peril  of  a  foreign  conquest.  Are  they  surrounded  by  the 
wise  men  of  the  land?  But  the  record  of  Alfred  must 
be  read  in  detail  if  one  is  to  understand  the  essential 
fact  that  he  was  a  statesman  who  was  rich  in  practical 
deeds,  and  not  a  politician  skilled  in  rhetorical  generali- 
zations. It  is  one  of  the  main  distinctions  between  the 
statesman  of  the  old  school  and  the  new. 

It  would  be  easy  to  take  other  great  figures  from  the 
earlier  governors  of  England  and  compare  them  with  the 
men  of  like  position  in  the  modern  period.  For  example, 
set  down  such  couples  as  St.  Anselm  and  Mr.  Gladstone; 
Simon  de  Montford  and  Mr.  Canning;  Wolsey  and 
Chatham;  Burghley  and  the  Younger  Pitt;  Edward  I  and 
Sir  Robert  Peel;  Edward  IV  and  George  IV;  Edmund 
Rich  with  all  the  Archbishops  of  Canterbury  since  Regi- 
nald Pole;  Sir  Thomas  More  with  all  the  Chancellors  of 
England  after  him.  Let  there  be  every  admission  that 
there  are  many  exceptional  cases  on  both  sides  of  the  line. 
There  were  innumerable  political  adventurers  and  dis- 
honest officials  during  the  mediaeval  period;  and  there 
have  been  dozens  of  hard-working,  wholly  good-inten- 
tioned  men  who  have  governed  England  since.  We  have 
but  to  mention  such  men  as  Peter  of  Savoy  and  Warwick 
the  Kingmaker  to  remember  that  the  earlier  days  were 
splattered  with  the  mud  of  self-seekers;  while  John  Eliot 


Si^TESMEN  AND  STATESMANSHIP     25 

and  Lord  Palmerston  may  remind  us  that  in  the  modern 
period    honest    gentlemen    still    went    into    politics,    even 
though  they  did  not  always  take  much  intelligence  with 
them.      But  it  is  suggested   that   an  impartial   weighing 
of   the    evidence    forces    us    to    the    conclusion    that    the 
general    standard   has    declined.      William    Cecil,    Lord 
Burghley,  was  the  last  English  Prime  Minister  who  was 
at  once  a  man  of  long  views,  an  expert  administrator, 
and  an  entirely  honest  man  who  always  thought  of  his 
country's  welfare  before  his  own  ambition.     It  is  inter- 
esting to  note   that  this   Cecil  stock  of  honest  political 
craftsmen,  although  it  continued  in  the  direct  line,  dis- 
appeared   from    the    public    political    stage    during    the 
ignoble   and  incompetent   self-seeking  of  the   eighteenth 
and  early  nineteenth  centuries,  with  their  Whig  oligarchy 
and  all-parties'  plutocracy.     The  Cecil  traditions  appar- 
ently could  not  live  in  such  an  atmosphe-e.     When  the 
dir-^ct  line  has   again   emerged  with   the   revolt   against 
"modern"  statesmanship,  it  is  worth  considering  that  the 
descendants  of  Elizabeth's  great  Minister  are  gradually 
impressing  themselves  on  the  nation  as  being  of  those 
few  members  of  the  Houses  of  Parliament  who  have  any 
principles  or  moral  convictions  beyond  the  selfish  expedi- 
ency of  the  movement.     It  is  a  valuable  survival  of  the 
older  traditions  of  statesmanship.     It  may  be  the  begin- 
ning of  a  return  to  a  system  when  statesmen  had  not 
degenerated    into   politicians;    when   they   did   not   start 
their  public  careers  with  the  words  that  the  young  Can- 
ning— that  most  typical  of  modern  governors — wrote  of 
the  House  of  Commons  when  he  was  eighteen;   "The 
only  path  to  the  only  desirable   thing  in   this  world — 
the  gratification  of  ambition."     It  would  be  no  exaggera- 


26     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

tion  to  say  that  such  a  sentence  has  been  the  very  breath 
of  modern  statesmen;  and  it  has  been  followed  to  its 
logical  conclusion  with  a  selfishness  that  would  have  made 
even  Thomas  Wolsey  hesitate.  A  lower  order  of  mind 
has  got  possession  of  the  trade  of  governing.  Ambition 
may  have  its  virtuous  side:  but  there  are  worse  things 
than  ambition  at  the  foundation  of  modern  politics. 
There  is  the  sinister  purpose  to  use  political  and  admin- 
istrative machinery  to  serve  the  interests  of  individuals 
and  classes.  Politics  has  become  the  trade  of  managing 
the  State  in  the  interests  of  the  men  in  possession  and 
their  friends.  Modern  statesmen  are  so  rarely  judicial 
administrators — they  are  very  interested  partisans.  Per- 
haps half  of  them  are  sincerely  trying  to  do  their  best  for 
the  State — judging  by  the  results,  they  must  therefore  be 
very  incompetent  persons. 


CHAPTER  II 

OLIVER   CROMWELL 
(1599-1658) 

IT  is  somewhat  strange,  at  the  first  glance,  that  the 
Commons  of  the  British  Parliament  allowed  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years  to  pass  before  they  raised  a 
monument  in  memory  of  the  man  to  whom  (if  popular 
rumour  can  be  believed)  they  owed  their  firm  existence 
among  our  national  institutions.  If  it  were  really  true 
that  Oliver  Cromwell  saved  Parliament  from  a  despotic 
dynasty  that  was  bent  on  its  destruction,  then  it  would 
se^m  only  common  courtesy  to  acknowledge  the  deliverer 
in  some  conspicuous  part  of  their  House.  But  Parlia- 
ment, the  symbol,  we  are  told,  of  the  freedom  of  the 
people,  hesitated.  At  last,  in  the  closing  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  a  private  gentleman  (with  a  distinc- 
tively foreign  name)  ventured  to  suggest  that,  being  the 
happy  possessor  of  a  contemporary  bust  of  the  Protector, 
he  would  gladly  offer  it  to  the  nation,  that  it  might  be 
set  up  as  a  memorial  in  the  precincts  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  The  Liberal  Government  in  office  at  the 
moment  apparently  felt  a  sense  of  embarrassment:  at 
least  it  did  not  accept  the  gift.  The  donor  waited;  and 
when  a  Tory  Government  came  into  power  he  renewed 
the  offer.  It  was  accepted.  A  Cabinet  formed  by  the 
Marquis  of  Salisbury,  a  direct  dcsccndcnt  of  that  Cecil 
who  had  been  the  First  Minister  of  the  Stuart  dynasty, 

27 


28     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

felt  able  with  propriety  to  commemorate  an  English 
statesman  whom  a  Ministry  chosen  by  Mr.  Gladstone 
had  hesitated  to  acknowledge.  There  was  a  good  reason 
for  this  paradoxical  proceeding;  and  the  reason  is  the 
clue  to  Oliver   Cromwell's  life. 

By  one  of  those  uncontrolled  gusts  of  fancy,  beginning 
one  scarcely  knows  where  or  how,  the  tale  was  started 
that  Cromwell  saved  English  liberty  from  the  assault  of 
despotically  minded  men  like  Strafford  and  his  kind. 
The  truth  is  very  different.  If  it  must  be  stated  in  a 
sentence — which  is  impossible,  with  justice — then  it 
would  be  truest  to  say  that  Cromwell  entirely  agreed 
with  the  manner  of  Strafford's  work.  He  completed  it. 
He  gave  England  an  absolute  central  government.  He 
succeeded  where  Strafford  had  failed.  The  fact  that  the 
one  owned  Charles  Stuart  for  his  master  and  the  other 
looked  to  Parliament  is  of  comparatively  small  impor- 
tance as  a  matter  of  political  science.  Strafford  wanted 
supreme  power  in  order  that  he  might  rule  England  for 
the  good  of  Englishmen.  Cromwell  sought  the  same 
supremacy,  and  (complex  though  his  character  was,  and 
hard  to  understand  with  any  certainty)  even  the  unchari- 
table as  a  rule  are  ready  to  admit  that  his  end  was  as 
unselfish  as  Strafford's.  They  were  not  self-seekers  in 
that  vulgar  sense  which  is  perhaps  the  commonest  mark 
of  the  trade  of  governing  men.  They  were  ambitious 
of  power:  they  rank  among  the  great  despots  of  history; 
but  neither  of  them  used  his  power  for  personally  selfish 
ends.  Indeed,  one  was  so  unselfish  that  he  gave  his  life 
in  exchange  for  his  ambition.  The  essential  fact  which 
is  common  to  both  is  that  they  tried  to  be  absolute,  with 
the  power  of  enforcing  whatever  orders  they  gave.    They 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  29 

were  both  tyrants — however  amiable  and  altruistic. 
Strafford  was  the  more  timid  of  the  two:  he  never  exe- 
cuted a  Parliamentary  leader  or  drove  a  House  of  Com- 
mons out  by  armed  force.  Cromwell  did  both  these  dis- 
tinctively autocratic  deeds — the  latter  he  repeated  several 
times.  Strafford  threatened  to  bring  an  army  from  Ire- 
land to  put  down  resistance.  Cromwell  went  much 
further  than  threats :  he  formed  the  first  great  standing 
army  that  this  free  land  had  seen,  and  spent  the  rest  of 
his  life  in  ruling  England  by  that  army's  strong  arm. 
Little  wonder  that  the  members  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons hesitated  to  set  up  his  monument  in  their  halls. 

After  a  few  years  of  the  rule  of  the  democrat  Oliver 
Cromwell  and  his  officers,  the  people  of  England  fell  on 
the  neck  of  the  returning  Stuart  in  an  ecstasy  of  joy. 
They  looked  back  on  Cromwell's  career  with  horror — 
for  he  had  succeeded  in  doing  what  they  had  only  feared 
Strafford  might  do.  It  was  not  merely  that  both  had 
demanded  absolute  power  and  had  appealed  to  armed 
force.  For  a  nation  is  not  easily  shocked  by  that,  seeing 
that  most  of  the  history  of  government  in  the  world  is 
the  story  of  applied  or  threatened  force.  To  call  a  man 
who  uses  force  a  scoundrel  would  be  absurd;  for  such  an 
assumption  would  put  half  the  statesmen  of  the  world 
into  the  criminal  dock.  But  what  England  was  entitled 
(and  able)  to  judge  was  the  use  of  the  power  when  it 
was  won.  Without  venturing  into  high  philosophical 
arguments  as  to  the  ultimate  sanctions  of  government — 
whether  force  or  persuasion  was  its  foundation — the 
people  of  England  had  strong,  common-sense  ideas  on 
the  question  whether  Cromwell's  rule  was  more  successful 
(that  is,  more  agreeable)    than  Strafford's.     Whatever 


30     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

the  historians  have  had  to  say  on  the  matter — and  they 
have  been  writing  and  talking  ever  since — less  informed 
(but  more  practically  minded)  Englishmen  have  contin- 
ued to  declare  that  the  rule  of  the  Puritans  and  Cromwell 
was  a  far  from  pleasant  event,  which  they  do  not  want 
repeated.  They  have  had  a  national  jealousy  of  a  stand- 
ing army  ever  since;  and  very  few  reasonable  men  have 
troubled,  since  Cromwell's  great  experiment,  to  propose 
repubUcanism  as  a  remedy  for  social  ills.  If  anyone  sug- 
gests a  republic  to-day,  one  may  be  fairly  sure  that  his 
elementary  knowledge  of  history  does  not  get  as  far  as 
the  period  of  the  Puritan  Revolution  of  the  seventeenth 
century. 

Whether  Cromwell  was  a  good  or  a  bad  statesman 
might  seem  easily  decided  by  considering  the  facts  of  his 
own  life.  But  there  are  few  men  for  whose  measurement 
we  are  more  dependent  on  comparison  with  others.  The 
greatest  event  of  his  career  was  when  he  cut  off  Charles 
Stuart's  head.  Now,  before  it  is  possible  to  judge  of  the 
value  of  that  act,  it  is  obviously  necessary  first  to  know 
what  was  in  that  head.  In  other  words,  before  deciding 
whether  Cromwell  was  doing  the  best  thing  for  England 
in  killing  the  King,  we  must  judge  that  King  and  his 
policy — and  the  proceedings  must  be  of  a  more  impartial 
kind  than  the  drumhead  court-martial  that  sat  in  West- 
minster Hall  in  1649,  Cromwell  and  his  friends  may 
have  had  as  admirable  intentions  as  they  declared  them- 
selves to  have:  but  it  is  necessary  to  come  to  some  con- 
clusion as  to  whether  Charles's  intentions  were  as  good 
or  better  than  their  own;  and,  far  more  important  than 
any  pious  intention,  it  is  all-important  to  compare 
Charles's    facts   with    Cromwell's    facts;   to    place   what 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  31 

Charles  had  done  beside  what  Cromwell  did.  We  shall 
have  to  discuss  motives  somewhat  fully,  because  Crom- 
well was  one  of  those  rather  wearisome  creatures  who 
talk  much  of  their  inner  life  and  their  good  and  bad 
intents.  But  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  in  history 
the  accomplished  fact  is  usually  more  Important  than  the 
best  of  desires. 

Of  course,  it  was  not  a  matter  between  Charles  and 
Cromwell  as  individuals.  They  merely  summed  up  the 
cases  for  their  respective  sides;  and  the  questions  at  issue 
between  them  were  some  of  the  most  momentous  in 
English  history.  There  are  all  kinds  of  smaller  inter- 
esting problems:  whether  Charles  was  an  unscrupulous 
liar  or  a  martyr;  whether  Oliver  was  a  saint  or  a  hypo- 
critical intriguer.  But  such  can  be  answered  at  leisure 
or  left  undecided.  The  main  points  in  dispute  can  be 
summed  up  in  the  wide  generalization  that  Charles  and 
Cromwell  fought  to  decide  whether  England  should  be 
governed  by  a  Monarch  or  by  a  Middle  Class.  Put  in 
another  way,  it  might  be  said  that  the  question  was 
whether  the  nation  should  be  Old  England  or  Modern 
England.  Charles  was  the  last  flicker  of  anything  that 
might  be  truthfully  called  mediaeval  in  our  history — 
though  most  of  it  had  already  disappeared  under  the  re- 
modelling hand  of  the  Tudors.  Still,  it  was  not  alto- 
gether too  late.  If  Charles  Stuart  had  won,  England 
might  have  slowly  developed  with  much  of  the  main 
structure  of  the  Middle  Ages  left;  as  there  were  many 
traces  left  in  Russia  and  Hungary  and  Austria  before  the 
recent  war;  as  there  are,  indeed,  traces  left  almost  every- 
where in  Europe,  except  in  this  land  that  was  swept  by 
Cromwells  and  Chathams.     Even  in  centralized  repub- 


32     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

lican  France  they  have  still  one  great  mark  of  medisv- 
ahsm,  the  peasant  proprietor. 

Cromwell,  as  against  Charles,  stood  for  all  those  new 
developments  which  were  to  make  England  modern.  If 
he  won — and  he  did  win,  in  spite  of  the  Restoration — 
then  it  was  inevitable  that  the  last  hope  of  Old  England 
had  gone,  and  for  generations  it  was  committed  to  the 
new  ways.  Cromwell's  victory  decided  that  plutocracy 
was  to  have  its  chance;  and  we  had  the  Whig  oligarchy 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  the  very  slightly  different 
industrial  plutocracy  of  the  nineteenth  century,  as  the 
natural  sequence  of  the  Puritan  victory  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  Cromwell  was  the  symbol  of  the  new  Middle 
Class  of  traders;  that  is,  the  merchants  and  manufac- 
turers of  the  towns,  and  the  country  gentry  of  the  agri- 
cultural districts.  It  was  a  struggle  between  a  Crown 
that  represented,  on  the  whole,  the  nation,  and  a  privi- 
leged class  which  mainly  (and  naturally)  represented 
itself.  There  were  all  sorts  of  side  issues,  such  as  re- 
ligion and  class  pride.  But  in  the  main,  it  was  a  fight 
between  Charles  as  the  champion  of  a  mediaeval  theory 
of  government  and  Cromwell  as  the  expounder  of  a  new 
theory;  so  new,  indeed,  that  it  had  not  expressed  itself 
in  any  concise  terms. 

When  the  Tudors  had  ruled  England  for  a  hundred 
years,  the  older  mediaeval  system  of  classes  had  been 
crushed  almost  beyond  recall — the  King  was  left,  the 
Roman  Church  and  the  nobles  had  gone.  In  the  Middle 
Ages  there  had  certainly  been  a  central  government  for 
the  nation;  but  if  we  moderns  could  suddenly  return  to 
those  days  we  would  think  that  the  State  scarcely  existed, 
or  even  that  it  had  been  abolished  altogether.     Compared 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  33 

with  the  central  government  of  to-day,  it  mi^ht  be  said 
that  there  was  scarcely  any  at  all  in  the  full  prime  of 
the  Plantagenets.  Then  social  law  was  mainly  a  matter 
of  local  courts  and  local  customs,  of  guilds  and  manors; 
although  the  King  and  his  courts  and  his  officers  were  a 
continually  growing  factor.  Yet  even  when  the  Tudors 
began  their  work  of  centralization,  governing  affairs 
were  in  the  main  conducted  by  Englishmen  for  them- 
selves, and  not  by  the  King's  officers  for  them.  The 
Tudors  laid  the  foundations  and  the  skeleton  framework 
for  a  strong  central  government  which  was  to  control 
England  from  Westminster.  But  they  left  it  undecided 
as  to  what  form  that  government  should  take.  The 
Tudors  had  paid  more  heed  to  their  personal  Ministers, 
to  Thomas  Wolsey,  to  the  Cecils  and  Walsingham,  than 
*o  their  Parliaments;  and  it  might  be  added  that  they 
sometimes  paid  more  attention  to  their  own  than  to 
either.  When  the  Stuarts  came  to  London  as  kings  they 
brought  with  them,  being  Scotsmen,  a  whole  bagful  of 
philosophical  and  theological  theories,  which  suddenly 
precipitated  the  main  problems  of  government;  when  a 
less  argumentative  race  might  have  allowed  the  whole 
matter  to  slumber  and  mature  for  many  generations,  and 
then  reach  a  quiet  solution.  But  the  Stuarts  were  full 
of  theories;  and  their  subjects  at  that  precise  moment 
were  unusually  full  of  facts.  The  result  was  the  Civil 
War  and  Oliver  Cromwell. 

It  has  been  said  the  subjects  were  unusually  full  of 
facts.  This  is  intended  in  a  very  definite  sense :  for  the 
merchant  class  of  England  had  suddenly  found  their 
coffers  and  warehouses  full  of  riches  and  goods.  In  the 
Middle  Ages,  society  had  done  without  the  middle  classes 


34     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

as  they  had  come  to  exist  in  the  days  of  the  early  Stuarts. 
To  give  one  illustration  of  this  factor:  the  East  India 
Company  was  chartered  in  the  last  years  of  Elizabeth; 
it  was  one  of  the  first  clear  signs  of  the  arrival  of  the 
great  British  commercial  magnates.  In  short,  at  the  pre- 
cise moment  that  the  argumentative  Scottish  kings  arrived, 
the  merchants  found  themselves  a  powerful  class.  When 
the  Stuarts  said  they  were  supreme  governors,  by  divine 
right,  the  merchants  took  up  the  challenge.  They  were 
beginning  to  hold  the  wealth  of  England;  when  the 
Crown  asked  for  a  revenue,  the  merchants  did  not  want 
to  pay,  and  demanded  a  share  in  the  government,  hoping 
thereby  that  they  could  make  someone  else  pay  the  taxes. 
The  Crown  in  the  old  days,  when  agricultural  land  was 
the  main  form  of  wealth,  had  "lived  of  its  own";  that  is, 
it  had  supported  the  burden  of  government  out  of  the 
royal  manors  and  the  royal  dues,  with  the  help  of  a  few 
simple  custom  duties  and  a  light  direct  subsidy  to  make 
up  the  balance  when  a  war  was  on.  But  when  the  Tudors 
made  the  functions  of  the  State  so  much  wider  in  scope, 
and  when  the  Stuarts  continued  the  process  by  developing 
the  royal  courts  of  administration  and  justice,  the  Crown 
had  to  ask  for  a  larger  revenue.  It  was  not  an  unreason- 
able demand,  for  it  was  doing  much  more  work.  Besides 
this,  the  great  rise  in  prices  (owing  to  American  silver 
and  other  causes)  made  the  royal  rents  even  less  than 
they  seemed  on  paper. 

The  Great  Civil  War  was  fought  over  the  question: 
Who  should  pay  for  the  increasing  expenses  of  English 
government?  The  question  as  to  who  should  rule  came 
up  in  a  secondary  manner.  It  is  not  without  good  reason 
that  the  schoolboy  believes  that  the  war  was  fought  to 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  35 

decide  whether  John  Hampden  should  be  compelled  to 
pay  shipmoney  to  King  Charles.  That  was  the  starting- 
point;  though  the  matters  in  dispute  developed  with  great 
rapidity  directly  the  first  problem  was  raised.  It  is  an 
unfortunate  fact  that  the  Great  Civil  War  was  not  the 
pure-souled  struggle  for  English  freedom  that  the  more 
imaginative  of  the  historians  would  have  us  believe.  It 
was,  on  the  contrary,  mainly  conducted  on  the  Parliamen- 
tary side  by  a  rather  sordid  set  of  self-interested  persons 
who  either  wanted  to  save  their  purses  or,  still  worse, 
saw  their  chance  of  a  successful  career  as  political  adven- 
turers. There  are  great  exceptions  to  this  serious  charge, 
and  Oliver  Cromwell  is  one  of  them — but  of  that  it  will 
be  more  possible  to  judge  after  analysing  his  deeds.  And 
there  was  a  great  deal  of  self-interest  on  the  side  of  the 
Court,  though  perhaps  less  than  on  the  side  of  the  Parlia- 
mentarians. But  take  it  all  in  all,  the  Civil  War  was 
not  a  struggle  between  a  disaffected  and  outraged  people 
and  a  despotic  King.  It  was  conducted  on  both  sides  by 
comparatively  small  groups  of  self-interested  men;  while 
the  bulk  of  the  nation  looked  on  with  apathy  or  disgust — 
which  is  the  popular  feeling  about  most  revolutions. 
When  the  fighting  began  there  were  frantic  efforts  on 
the  part  of  whole  districts  and  counties  to  declare  them- 
selves neutral — just  as  peaceful  and  respectable  people 
in  everyday  life  try  to  pretend  they  do  not  notice  when 
drunken  parties  begin  to  quarrel.  The  vast  majority  of 
the  English  people  would  willingly  have  stood  outside  the 
Civil  War;  partly  because  they  did  not  know  what  it  was 
all  about,  and  partly  because  they  had  a  shrewd  notion 
that  it  was  six  of  one  and  half  a  dozen  of  the  other — 
which  homely  verdict  is  the  strictly  scientific  explanation 


36     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

of  the  majority  of  the  great  political  squabbles  which  are 
discussed  with  such  solemnity  in  the  history-books. 

The  sole  question  which  could  interest  the  people  as  a 
whole  was  whether  Charles  Stuart  and  his  men  would 
rule  England  more  agreeably  than  John  Pym  and  Hamp- 
den and  Cromwell.  Was  a  king's  government  worse 
than  a  parliament's?  Enthusiastic  democrats  have 
jumped  to  the  hasty  conclusion  that  it  is  a  matter  of 
common  sense  that  does  not  admit  of  argument.  They 
assume,  almost  as  a  matter  of  arithmetic,  that  five  hun- 
dred men  must  inevitably  be  more  democratic  than  one; 
and  clinch  the  argument  by  pointing  out  that  the  five  hun- 
dred had  been  elected  by  the  freemen  of  the  nation.  The 
theory  shows  a  primitive  innocency  of  the  way  in  which 
public  affairs  are  conducted.  A  little  historical  research 
reveals  that  the  Civil  War  was  in  great  part  organized 
by  Mr.  John  Pym  and  a  small  group  of  gentlemen  who 
met  in  the  City  of  London  to  further  their  own  financial 
interests,  and  discovered  that  political  intrigue  was  the 
best  method  of  getting  what  they  wanted.  They  cannot 
be  said  to  have  represented  popular  opinion;  they  rather 
manufactured  it  to  represent  themselves.  Those  enthusi- 
astic mobs  that  rushed  to  the  doors  of  the  Houses  of 
Parliament,  to  influence  their  voting,  were  said  by  the 
Royalists — with  good  evidence  behind  their  statements — 
to  have  been  produced  by  Pym  and  his  friends  in  the  same 
manner  that  a  theatrical  manager  produces  a  show  on 
the  stage.  But  whether  the  Parliamentary  case  was  "pro- 
duced," or  a  free  rising  of  the  people,  is  a  less  important 
matter  than  discovering  the  intention  of  the  Parliamen- 
tarians when  they  had  obtained  the  supreme  power  for 
which  they  fought. 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  37 

One  can  learn  more  about  their  motives  by  studying, 
for  example,  the  story  of  this  "Company  of  the  Adven- 
turers for  the  Plantations  of  the  Islands  of  Providence, 
Henrietta,  and  the  adjacent  Islands"  (of  which  Mr.  Pym 
was  the  inspiring  secretary)  than  by  reading  any  number 
of  parliamentary  speeches  and  petitions  of  right.     The 
members  gave  the  Earl  of  Holland  one  full  share  in  the 
Company  without  payment,  in  return  for  the  kind  trouble 
he  had  taken  in  getting  concessions  out  of  Government 
officials.     Nothing  could  be  more  typical  of  the  attitude 
of  the  Parliamentarians.     They  were  gentlemen  with  a 
keen  eye  for  their  personal  business;  and  they  realized, 
almost  for  the  first  time  in  our  history,  that  government 
could  be  made  a  convenient  tool  for  ambitious  commer- 
cial men.     They  were  not  all  like  that:  Sir  Thomas  Eliot 
died  in   the  Tower,   after  three  years'   harsh   imprison- 
ment, rather  than  retract  one  word  of  his  political  faith. 
For  it  was  a  faith  in  his  case,  not  a  business  convenience. 
But  of  the  men  who  went  to  prison  with  him  for  defy- 
ing the  King,  most  apologized  and  said  they  Avere  sorry. 
There  was  Hampden,  who  had  also  the  courage  to  die 
for  his  convictions.     And  there  were   men  who  signed 
Charles's  death-warrant  at  the  risk  of  their  own  necks 
out  of  sheer  conviction  that  they  were  doing  justice.     But 
the  greater  part  of  the  Puritan  revolutionaries  were  less 
interested  in  their  faith  than  their  profits.     As  Dr.  Cun- 
ningham, the  greatest  of  English  economic  historians,  has 
sarcastically  written:     "Their  attachment  to  their  prin- 
ciples was  not  adequately  tested  by  a  contest  which  was 
the  occasion  of  improving  the  fortunes  of  so  many."     He 
also   has   written    a   criticism   of   the   Long   Parliament, 
which  our  schoolchildren  are  taught  to  consider  as  the 


38     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

brave  body  that  saved  us  from  constitutional  slavery: 
*The  Long  Parliament  attained  an  unfortunate  notoriety 
for  the  worst  forms  of  political  corruption.  .  .  .  Parlia- 
ment, by  the  confiscation  of  Crown  and  Ecclesiastical 
lands,  threw  an  immense  amount  of  real  estate  into  the 
market,  and  some  of  the  members  were  enabled  to  become 
purchasers  at  very  low  rates.  I,enthall,  the  Speaker  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  did  not  set  an  example  of  up- 
rightness. Oliver  Cromwell  earned  the  gratitude  of 
honest  citizens  by  evicting  the  gang  of  unscrupulous  poli- 
ticians who  were  plotting  to  prolong  their  tenure  of 
authority."  It  was  at  this  time  that  Lady  Verney  wrote 
in  a  letter  to  a  friend:  "Everyone  tells  me  there  is  no 
hope  of  doing  anything  in  the  House  of  Commons  except 
by  bribery" — so  she  gave  £50  to  the  Speaker's  sister- 
in-law. 

There  was  one  earnest  supporter  of  the  Parliamentary 
cause,  a  Robert  Spavin,  who  was  a  secretary  to  Oliver 
Cromwell.  We  find  this  instructive  person  writing  to 
Clarke,  in  November  1648,  of  "that  old  jog-trot  form  of 
government  by  King,  Lords  and  Commons.  No  matter 
how  or  by  whom,  sure  I  am  it  cannot  be  worse  if  honest 
men  have  the  managing  of  it,  and  noe  matter  whether 
they  be  grcate  or  noe.  .  .  .  The  Lord  is  about  a  greate 
worke,  such  as  will  stumble  many  meane-principled  men. 
.  .  ."  Spavin  was  afterwards  caught  forging  Cromwell's 
signature  to  passes  and  protections,  in  which  this  secre- 
tary was  doing  a  thriving  trade :  and  he  closed  his  career 
in  Puritan  history  by  riding  through  the  City  of  London 
with  a  large  placard  on  back  and  front,  explaining  the 
nature  of  his  crime.    It  is  regrettable  to  think  that  Spavin 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  39 

was  perhaps   more  truly   representative   of  the   Puritan 
RebelHon  than  his  master  ever  was. 

And  yet   Cromwell,   had  he  been  built   for  the  part, 
could  not  have  more  completely  summed  up  in  his  family 
history  the   Middle   Classes  that  made  the   Civil   War. 
Thomas  Cromwell,  the  chief  of  the  gang  of  professional 
thieves  who  burgled  the  property  of  the  monasteries  in 
the  Tudor  period   (under  the  thin  disguise  of  "reform- 
ing" the  Church),  had  a  sister  Katherine,  who  married  a 
rich  brewer  of  Putney,   Morgan  Williams.     Their  son, 
Richard,  to  quote  the  somewhat  generous  words  of  Mr. 
Firth,  "assisted  his  uncle  in  his  dealings  with  refractory 
Churchmen."      Like   many  other  men  who   have  soiled 
their  fingers  and  their  souls  by  dirty  work,  he  got  his 
reward.      The   priory   of  Plinchinbrook   and   the   abbey 
of  Ramsey  and  some  of  Its  manors  became  the  property 
of  this  Richard  Williams,  who  showed  his  great  respect 
for  i.is  uncle  by  adopting  the  surname  of  Cromwell.     It 
would  be  Impossible  to  sum  up  more  concisely  both  the 
real  meaning  of  the  Reformation  and  the  origin  of  the 
new  Middle  Classes  of  the  merchants  and  landed  gentry, 
who  founded  themselves  in  English  history  on  the  spoils 
of   the   destroyed    Church.      Richard's   son    became    Sir 
Henry  Cromwell,  "the  golden  knight,"  who  built  Hinch- 
Inbrook  House,  wherein  he  entertained  Queen  Elizabeth, 
and  spent  his  great  wealth  in  assisting  his  sovereign  in 
maintaining  "the  sincere  religion  of  Christ"  and  protest- 
ing against  "the  devilish  superstition  of  the  Pope."  There 
were  obvious  reasons  why  the  man  who  held  a  priory 
and  an  abbey  should  not  want  the  Roman  religion  re- 
stored; and  the  same  reason  held  good  in  hundreds  of 


40     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

like  cases  throughout  England.  It  was  a  large  part  of 
the  reason  that  made  the  landed  gentry  of  England  so 
patriotic  in  defending  their  country  against  the  Armada 
peril;  and  it  founded  that  traditional  dread  of  Popery 
which  was  the  basis  of  the  Puritan  Roundheads  and  the 
Hanoverian  Whigs.  For  generations  after  the  Refor- 
mation the  poHcy  of  England  was  mainly  dictated  by 
the  gentlemen  who  were  in  possession  of  the  lands  which 
had  been  seized  from  the  Roman  Church.  It  was  the 
foundation  of  our  earnest  Protestant  faith. 

Robert  Cromwell,  a  son  of  Sir  Henry,  succeeded  to  one 
of  his  father's  new  estates,  and  sat  in  the  Elizabethan 
Parliament  to  keep  watch  over  the  maintenance  of  that 
Protestant  faith  which  was  his  title-deed.  He  married 
into  a  similar  family  that  had  also  got  its  share  of  the 
ecclesiastical  spoils;  while  his  two  sisters  became  the 
mothers  of  Whalley  the  regicide  and  John  Hampden 
respectively.  He  himself  was  the  father  of  Oliver.  A 
simple  family  story  of  this  kind  will  save  much  laborious 
searching  after  the  causes  of  the  Civil  War  and  later 
events  in  our  national  history.  It  shows  why  Oliver 
Cromwell  so  significantly  represented  the  men  who 
opposed  Charles  Stuart;  he  was  the  great-great-grandson 
of  the  wealthy  brewer  of  Putney,  whose  son  became  a 
county  gentleman  by  grants  of  Church  lands.  To  make 
his  position  quite  certain,  Oliver  married  Elizabeth 
Bourchier,  the  daughter  of  a  wealthy  City  knight  who 
had  made  a  fortune  in  furs  and  then  set  up  as  a  country 
gentleman  in  Essex.  In  other  words,  Cromwell  repre- 
sented at  the  same  time  the  rich  trading  class  and  the 
new  landed  gentry  into  which  the  traders  had  blossomed 
during  the   Tudor   period.     This  is   not   a    far-fetched 


OLIVER  CROMJVELL  41 

symbol;  Cromwell  was  not  an  exception;  he  was  the 
fair  type  of  his  party.  It  is  an  altogether  significant 
fact  that  there  were  thirty-one  members  of  the  Long  Par- 
liament who  were  related  to  him  by  blood  and  by  mar- 
riage. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  Cromwell's  family  history,  and  the 
almost  miraculous  way  in  which  it  sums  up  the  case 
of  his  party,  the  truth  is  that  Cromwell  was  the  least 
symbolic  figure  in  the  whole  gallery  of  portraits  of  the 
Puritan  leaders.  He  apparently  really  desired  to  give 
England  good  government;  he  was  not  anxious  to  get 
good  bargains  in  confiscated  lands.  He  certainly  accepted 
from  Parliament  a  grant  of  the  valuable  lands  of  the 
Marquis  of  Worcester;  but  he  would  not  have  been  a 
human  creature  if  he  had  been  so  modest  as  to  refuse 
any  reward  after  his  astounding  services  to  his  party. 
But,  more  important  than  these  points,  he  was  not  a 
believer  in  a  parliamentary  system,  like  Eliot  and  Pym 
and  Hampden.  It  is  the  supreme  paradox  of  Cromwell's 
career.  Of  course,  he  would  not  have  risen  in  the  House 
and  said  so:  but  one  day  when  the  Earl  of  Manchester 
(a  real  Parliamentary  Puritan)  got  angry  with  Crom- 
well, he  revealed  in  the  Lords  what  Oliver  had  whispered 
in  his  ear  quite  early  in  the  war:  "My  lord,  if  you  will 
stick  firm  to  honest  men  you  shall  find  yourself  at  the 
head  of  an  army  which  shall  give  law  both  to  King  and 
Parliament."  The  noble  lord  might  have  persuaded  him- 
self to  become  general  of  a  despotic  army;  but  what 
annoyed  him  was  that  Cromwell  "has  even  ventured  to 
tell  me  that  it  will  never  be  well  with  England  till  I  were 
Mr.  Montague  and  there  was  ne'er  a  lord  or  peer  in  the 
kingdom."     What  Cromwell  said  to  Lord  Manchester 


42     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

about  an  army  was  almost  word  for  word  what  Strafford 
had  whispered  to  Charles — and  had  been  beheaded  by 
the  Parliament  men  for  saying.  If  Strafford  and  Crom- 
well had  not  taken  different  sides  they  would  have  been 
the  closest  of  colleagues.  But  then,  bitter  wars  are  rarely 
fought  because  the  rivals  disagree,  but  rather  because 
they  both  want  the  same  thing.  In  this  case  Cromwell 
and  Strafford  both  wanted  absolute  power,  and  both 
thought  that  an  army  was  the  quickest  way  to  get  what 
they  wanted. 

There  was  another  matter  where  Cromwell  did  not 
represent  this  Puritan  party.  He  did  not  bully  the  poorer 
people  and  make  money  by  stealing  their  lands.  On  the 
contrary,  his  earliest  fame  was  won  by  protecting  them. 
In  1630  he  was  defending  the  common  rights  of  the 
burgesses  of  Huntingdon,  and  made  "disgraceful  and 
unseemly  speaches"  to  the  mayor  on  the  subject.  When 
he  moved  to  the  Eastern  counties,  Cromwell  soon 
earned  the  local  nickname  of  "Lord  of  the  Fens"  for  his 
defence  of  the  commoners  who  were  losing  their  rights 
owing  to  the  reclaiming  schemes  of  that  earnest  Puritan, 
the  Earl  of  Bedford,  one  of  the  "Adventurers"  and  a 
friend  of  Pym.  But  it  was  really  that  despotic  person 
King  Charles  who  came  to  the  assistance  of  the  com- 
moners in  this  particular  attack  by  democratic  Parliamen- 
tarians. Cromwell  was  again  on  the  popular  side  when 
the  Earl  of  Manchester,  the  Puritan  peer  already  men- 
tioned, seized  the  common  lands  of  Somersham,  near 
St.  Ives.  Manchester  used  his  parliamentary  influence, 
and  the  trained  bands  were  sent  to  maintain  him  in  pos- 
session; whereupon  Cromwell  persuaded  the  House  of 
Commons  to  appoint  a  committee  to  hear  the  case :  and 


OLIVER  CROMJVELL  43 

his  appearance  before  that  body  "was  so  tempestuous 
and  his  behaviour  so  insolent"  that  he  became  one  of  the 
recognized  defenders  of  the  peasant  class  against  the  new 
rich  who  were  buying  up  England  out  of  their  trading 
profits. 

In  all  these  ways  Cromwell,  the  leader  of  the  Puritan 
Rebellion,  was  paradoxically  unlike  his  party.  But  per- 
haps he  stands  apart  from  the  Puritan  party  above  all 
in  that  he  believed  in  the  Puritan  creed;  in  his  case  it  was 
not  a  political  convenience  or  a  mere  family  tradition. 
His  religion  was  the  chief  foundation  of  his  character. 
It  sounds  somewhat  a  ranting,  hysterical  thing  in  modern 
ears;  and  in  its  more  emotional  moments  it  almost  seems 
to  ring  untrue.  Yet,  taken  as  a  whole,  it  must  be  accepted 
as  a  historical  fact  that  Cromwell's  religion  was  deep  and 
sincere,  and  that  it  affected  almost  every  moment  of  his 
public  life.  We  shall  often  have  to  believe  this  at  the 
expense  of  Cromwell's  reputation  as  a  man  of  intellect: 
but  that  will  increase  our  respect  for  him  as  an  artist  and 
poet  and  mystic.  It  is  perhaps  as  a  psychological  study 
that  this  man  is  most  interesting.  If  he  had  not  chanced 
to  get  an  immense  (and  unearned)  reputation  as  a  states- 
man, he  would  still  have  remained  as  a  great  example  of 
that  most  alluring  of  all  studies — the  human  mind.  What 
are  we  to  make  of  a  man  who  won  battles  by  first-class 
strategy  and  tactics  and  by  the  nerve-power  of  personal 
physical  courage,  and  then  wrote  his  despatches  explain- 
ing them  in  the  terms  of  a  Methodist  parson?  What 
can  we  make  of  a  man  who  professed  to  be  fighting  for  the 
liberty  of  the  English  to  do  and  to  think  what  they 
pleased,  and  yet  gave  orders  for  Irish  boys  and  girls 
to  be  seized  as  if  they  were  cattle  and  shipped  to  the 


44     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

West   Indies   to   stock   the   land   as   one   would   stock   a 
farmyard?     What  is  to  be  said  of  a  statesman  who  re- 
fused to  listen  to  French  proposals  for  an  alliance  until 
they  had  stopped  the  persecution  of  the  Vaudois,  and  yet 
allowed   his   own   troops   in   Ireland  to   hang  priests   in 
cold   blood,    and    cut   their    throats   during  the   heat    of 
assaults?     There  was  no  man  who  could  enforce  disci- 
pline so  masterfully  as  Cromwell;  what  his  army  did  was 
exactly  what  he  allowed  it  to  do.     How  can  we  measure 
a  man  who  killed  a  king  for  being  a  despot,  and  then 
ruled  England,  until  the  day  he  died,  by  the  sword?     It 
is  fairly  clear  that  it  will  not  be  easy  to  find  any  psycho- 
logical generalizations  wide  enough  to  cover  such  a  case. 
Cromwell   has   succeeded  in   misleading   most   of   the 
people  who  have  tried  to  make  him  intelligible:  but  that 
is  because  they  have  attempted  to  build  up  a  figure  of 
perfectly  logical  parts.      In  any  ordinary   sense  of  the 
term,  he  was  not  logical;  and  he  only  becomes  plausible 
when  we  realize  that  his  greatest  gift  was  not  his  power 
to  outwit  his  enemies,  but  a  capacity  for  deceiving  and 
outwitting  himself.     He  was  a  great  soldier,  a  man  of 
great  intellect,  but  before  all  else  he  was  a  consummate 
actor  of  the  highly  strung  emotional  sort;  a  man  who 
could   have   roused   the   gallery  at   every  cheap   theatre 
where  they  like  their  emotions  served  somewhat  hot.     He 
could  ride  a  passion  with  such  fury  that  he  could  con- 
vince himself  that  it  was  a  real  fact.     He  could  even 
convince  himself  against  the  facts.     And  for  a  work  such 
as  Cromwell  had  to  do,  the  capacity  for  self-deception 
must  have  been  very  comforting  and  helpful.     The  man 
who  saw  the  facts  as  they  were  would  quickly  have  got 
disheartened;  his  enthusiasm  would  have  dried  up  when 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  45 

he  discovered  that  he  represented  a  rather  sordid  and 
selfish  class,  and  that  the  men  on  the  other  side  were  as 
good,  or  better,  than  those  on  his  own. 

Cromwell  was  an  emotionalist  who  also  possessed  an 
extraordinarily  good  intellect.     It  is  always  a  powerful 
combination,  and  he  is  one  of  the  clearest  examples  of  it. 
His  life  was  a  continual  balancing  of  the  one  side  against 
the  other.     But  the  emotions  usually  won;  for  although 
his  brain  was  of  marvellous  working  qualities,  yet  it  was 
of  comparatively  small   range.      Cromwell   had  not  the 
breadth  of  vision  and  of  thought  that  hampers  so  many 
men's  careers.     Half  the  doubts  and  hesitations  that  hold 
them  up  to  think — until  they  are  lost — never  troubled 
Cromwell  at  all.     When  he  was  perplexed  he  fell  back  on 
his  dreams,  and  his  dreams  generally  had  their  convincing 
way.    That  he  was  above  all  a  man  of  emotions  is  proved 
by  the  stor>  of  his  early  years  of  religious  doubts.     Crom- 
well was  so  amazingly  clever  as  a  political  schemer  and 
as  a  soldier,  that  one  is  tempted  to  forget  that  the  foun- 
dation of  the  whole  man  was  a  half-mad  religious  mysti- 
cism, which  unkind  observers  would  have  been  justified 
in   describing  as   a   mania.      His   medical   men  called   it 
melancholia,  and  ranked  it  with  other  nervous  complaints. 
In  the  year   1628,  when  Cromwell  went  up  to  London 
to  sit  in  his  first  parliamentary  session,  the  Court  physi- 
cian. Sir  Theodore  Mayerne,  made  this  note  in  his  diary: 
"For   Mons.    Cromwell   valde   melancholicus."      It   sug- 
gests something  sour  in  the  psychological  world;  and  had 
Cromwell  remained  a  simple  farmer,  he  would  doubtless 
have  been  a  somewhat  tedious  neighbour.     But  his  career 
as  a  soldier,  and  then  as  the  master  of  England,  took 
him  out  of  his  narrow  self,  where  it  might  have  been  his 


46     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

fate  to  live.  But  there  is  no  denying  the  terrors  of 
those  early  attacks;  when,  panic-stricken  by  the  dread  of 
death,  he  would  call  up  the  Huntingdon  doctors  "at  mid- 
night and  such  unseasonable  hours,  very  many  times," 
as  one  of  them  wrote.  Between  1628  and  1636  Crom- 
well's soul  was  a  seething  vessel  of  moral  conflict.  One 
of  his  friends  told  how  religion  was  "laid  into  his  soul 
with  the  hammer  and  fire";  and  the  sufferer  himself  de- 
scribed his  victory  over  evil  with  all  the  ecstatic  enthu- 
siasm of  a  Salvation  Army  convert:  "I  lived  in  and 
loved  darkness,  and  hated  light;  I  was  a  chief,  the  chief 
of  sinners.  .  .  .  My  soul  is  with  the  Congregation  of 
the  Firstborn,  my  body  rests  in  hope.  .  .  .  He  giveth 
me  to  see  light  in  His  light." 

It  is  of  the  greatest  historical  importance  to  know  that 
at  the  moment  of  the  outbreak  of  war  between  King  and 
Parliament,  Cromwell,  the  cleverest  soldier  in  the  king- 
dom, went  into  action  with  the  calm,  if  enthusiastic,  assur- 
ance of  one  who  had  just  come  to  an  entirely  satisfactory 
agreement  with  the  Creator  of  the  Universe.  To  come 
to  terms  with  the  King  of  England,  after  such  a  treaty 
with  his  God,  was  not  likely  to  trouble  the  Parliamentary 
soldier.  During  the  rest  of  his  career  he  continued  to 
assume  (to  the  verge  of  boredom)  that  he  was  always 
acting  as  the  servant  of  the  Lord.  It  was  asserted  so 
persistently,  and  with  so  childlike  a  touch,  that  it  is 
almost  impossible  to  think  that  Cromwell  ever  doubted 
the  great  truth  of  his  mission  as  the  agent  of  God.  At 
the  moment  of  his  "conversion"  he  had  devoted  himself 
to  the  service  of  his  newly  found  Master:  "If  here  I 
may  honour  my  God,  either  by  doing  or  suffering,  I  shall 
be  most  glad.     Truly  no  poor  creature  hath  more  cause 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  47 

to  put  himself  forth  in  the  cause  of  God  than  I  have." 
So  it  came  about  that  Cromwell  became  a  Puritan  leader 
with  a  personal  sense  of  religious  conviction  which  could 
only  be  matched  with  William  Laud's  and  gentle  George 
Herbert's — and  they  were  on  the  other  side.  It  would 
be  fairly  safe  to  say  that  none  of  the  leaders  took  their 
faith  as  seriously  as  Cromwell  did.  If  it  was  really  a 
"Puritan  Revolution,"  then  Oliver  and  the  handful  of 
his  troopers  were  the  most  serious  believers — while  the 
rest  of  the  revolutionaries  had  more  material  and  more 
private  designs  of  their  own. 

It  was  when  he  turned  to  the  greatest  work  of  his  life, 
the  building  of  the  "New  Model"  Army,  that  Cromwell 
displayed  the  complexity  of  his  character,   and   showed 
that  the  most  unbalanced  of  religious  mystics  could  be  the 
hardest-headed  and  the  clearest  thinker,   and  the   most 
active  of  doers  that  England  could  produce  in  that  tur- 
moil of  violent  action  and  assertive  thought.     His  new 
army  expressed  Cromwell's  two  sides,  his  mysticism  and 
his  realism;  and  made  them  into  a  whole  which  became 
something  remarkably   near   a    miracle.      He   had   soon 
detected  the   weakness  of  the  ordinary  soldiers  of  the 
Parliamentary  army,  with  which  Essex  was  attempting 
(or  not  attempting)   to  crush  Charles.     Mr.  Firth,  the 
first  authority  on  the  period,  thus  sums  up  Essex's  army: 
some  of  his  "foot  regiments  were  excellent,  but  the  ranks 
of  his  cavalry  were  filled  with  men  attracted  solely  by 
high  pay  and   opportunities   of  plunder."     These  were 
undoubtedly    worthy    representatives    of    the    group    of 
political  adventurers  who  were  fighting  as  earnestly  for 
oflices   and  spoils   in   political   circles  as   Essex's  cavalry 
fought   for  plunder  on   the  battlefield.      But  these,   the 


48     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

politicians  and  the  cavalrymen,  were  not  of  the  stuff  that 
builds  up  a  new  nation :  and  Cromwell  was  simple- 
minded  enough  to  imagine  that  a  new  national  heart  was 
not  beyond  reach  of  serious  men.  It  was  that  for  which 
he  was  fighting. 

Cromwell  once  told  one  of  his  colonels  (who  had 
grumbled  at  the  appointment  of  a  praying  captain)  :  "I 
think  that  he  that  prays  and  preaches  best  will  fight 
best."  It  was  one  of  those  remarks  that  seem  thoroughly 
stupid  in  print.  It  was  on  the  field  of  battle  that  it  proved 
entirely  true.  Cromwell's  theory  of  psalm-singing 
soldiers  gave  him  the  finest  army  in  England;  just  as 
the  religious  mania  of  their  leader  helped  to  make  him 
supreme  among  the  common  herd  of  politicians  with 
whom  he  passed  so  much  of  his  career.  There  is  little 
doubt  that,  had  it  not  been  for  Cromwell  and  his  army, 
the  Great  Rebellion  would  soon  have  flickered  out  in 
indecision — perhaps  a  happier  result  than  its  fight  to  a 
bitter  end.  The  Earls  of  Essex  and  Manchester,  and 
their  like,  never  intended  to  do  anything  serious  to  the 
constitution  of  England;  and  they  were  alarmed  when  they 
found  they  had  raised  a  bigger  storm  than  they  could 
ride.  They  had  never  meant  to  win  freedom  for  any- 
body but  themselves;  and  these  "Levellers,"  who  talked 
indiscreetly  of  "all  men,"  were  regarded  as  a  warning. 
Anyhow,  Cromwell  and  his  troopers  gave  the  Great 
Rebellion  a  moral  tone.  Whereas,  if  Pym  had  continued 
to  lead,  it  would  have  been  little  more  than  a  legal 
argument  and  a  squabble  to  decide  who  should  pay 
the  taxes.  Cromwell  at  least  raised  it  to  the  level  of  a 
sincere  chapel  meeting — which  is  better  than  the  atmos- 
phere of  constitutional  lawyers  and  bank  directors.     It 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  49 

was  this  religious  conviction  which  put  Cromwell  and 
his  troopers  on  top,  and  left  all  the  unconvinced  (and 
unconvincing)  little  men  underneath.  Clarendon  (with 
that  broadminded  sanity  which  usually  distinguished  the 
Royalists  from  the  narrower  Puritans)  summed  up  the 
position  of  the  rival  armies  in  this  way:  the  King's  he 
calls  "a  dissolute,  undisciplined,  wicked,  beaten  army"; 
Cromwell's  "an  army  whose  order  and  discipline,  whose 
sobriety  and  manners,  whose  courage  and  success  hath 
made  it  famous  and  terrible  in  the  world." 

If  it  was   Cromwell's   religious  creed  that  made   his 
army  and  his  power,   it  was  exactly  the   same  religion 
that  ruined  his  cause.     For  it  was  a  dark  and  joyless 
faith.     Englishmen  would  have  borne  a  lot  of  economic 
and  political  tyranny  from  either  Charles  or  Pym;  but 
they  refused  to  have  their  lives  turned  into  an  everlasting 
Sunday-school  class  to  suit  the  tastes  of  a  few  persistent 
persons   who   were   suffering   from   enlargement   of   the 
moral  organs.     Puritanism  and  Independency  were  the 
very  best  of  creeds  to  take  into  battle;  but  for  domestic 
purposes  a  brighter,  more  human,  belief  was  necessary. 
England    might    have    borne    with    Cromwell's    major- 
generals;  but  when  sour-minded  Prynnes  got  hysterical 
because  there  were  such  things  as  actors  and  long  curls 
and  health-drinking  in  the  land,  then  nobody  was  very 
indignan*-  because  Charles  Stuart's  despotic  government 
chopped  off  his  ears  for  his  stupidity.     Later  on,  when 
he  abused  Laud's  ecclesiastical  policy,  they  chopped  off 
what  was  left  of  the  stumps — and  this  time  there  was 
popular   sympathy  for  him.      But  that  was  because  by 
this  time  England  had  come  to  associate  Laud  with  the 
restoration    of    Roman    Catholicism — so    the    gentlemen 


50     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

who  held  Church  estates  were  getting  nervous  about  their 
title-deeds;  and  Prynne  became  a  useful  pillar  of  the 
Puritan  party.  It  was  the  dismalness  of  their  lives  more 
than  their  political  practices  that  made  Cromwell  and  his 
friends  intolerable  and  brought  back  Charles. 

If  the  Puritans  had  won,   England  would  have  been 
put  outside  the  circle  of  European  culture.      Moral  de- 
generates  who    put   their   swords    through    stained-glass 
windows  and  suppressed  Sunday  pastimes  lest  they  should 
make  men  happy  would  soon  have  reduced  their  nation 
to  barbarism.     The   difference  between  the   Churchman 
Herbert,  who  loved  everything  that  was  beautiful   and 
charitable,  and  the  monomaniac  Prynne,  who  loathed  all 
that  was  charming  and  generous,  was  the  difference  be- 
tween civilization  and  savagery.     Here,  again,  Cromwell 
did  not  truly  represent  his  party — but  it  was  just  that 
he  should  suffer  with  the  dogmas  that  he  himself  seated 
in  power.     He  was  never  so  small  a  man  as  to  be  afraid 
of  the  pleasure  of  life ;  and  there  are  signs  that  a  few  more 
years  of  power  in  Whitehall  would  have  broadened  his 
mind   still   more.      He   was   always   fond   of  music   and 
social  recreations:  he  was  a  healthy  country  gentleman 
who  loved  a  good  horse  and  a  skilful  hawk.     When  his 
daughter  Frances  was  married   from  the  palace,   "they 
had  forty-eight  violins  and  much  mirth  with   frolic,  be- 
sides mixed  dancing  (a  thing  before  accounted  profane) 
till  five  of  the  clock  yesterday  morning."    And  for  Mary's 
wedding  at  Hampton  Court,  Marvell  wrote  some  songs 
and   put   Oliver   in   them   as  Jove — a    far   from   decent 
proceeding  in  the  house  of  a  strictly  orthodox  religious 
maniac. 

Just  as  we  have  seen  that  Cromwell's  religious  faith 


OLIVER  CROMJVELL  51 

might  fairly  be  called  the  foundation  of  his  military 
career,  so  also  with  perfect  historical  accuracy  it  may  be 
said  that  it  was  his  chief  asset  in  political  life.  It  can 
scarcely  be  believed  that  Cromwell  would  have  had  the 
moral  nerve  to  turn  out  objectionable  Parliaments  by 
force  if  he  had  not  felt  an  intense  conviction  of  super- 
natural support.  Here  are  the  words  with  which  he 
dismissed  the  Parliament  of  1654,  having  first  filled  the 
city  with  troops  and  placed  armed  men  over  the  House: 
"I  think  myself  bound,  as  in  my  duty  to  God,  and  to 
the  people  of  these  nations  for  their  safety  and  good 
in  every  respect — I  think  it  my  duty  to  tell  you  that  it 
is  not  for  the  profit  of  these  nations,  nor  for  common 
and  public  good,  for  you  to  continue  here  any  longer." 
That  has  the  ring  of  inner  conviction,  and  not  merely 
the  bluflfing  of  a  political  adventurer.  And  whenever  he 
quotes  God  as  his  main  supporter — and  he  was  con- 
tinually doing  so — on  the  whole  he  convinces  us  that  he 
meant  it,  and  that  it  was  indeed  the  all-important  factor 
in  his  policy.  Of  course,  sometimes  he  made  himself 
very  ridiculous;  as  when,  for  example,  on  the  surrender 
by  Colonel  Windebank  of  Blechington  House,  Crom- 
well's official  despatch  ran:  "This  was  the  mercy  of 
God,  and  nothing  is  more  due  than  a  real  acknowledg- 
ment. And  though  I  have  had  greater  mercies,  yet  none 
clearer.  ...  I  hope  you  will  pardon  me  if  I  say,  God 
is  not  enough  owned.  We  look  too  much  to  men  and 
visible  helps."  Whereas  the  truth  of  the  matter  was 
that  Windebank  had  just  married,  and  was  having  such  a 
delightful  honeymoon  that  he  could  not  be  bothered  by 
fighting.  It  was  a  dangerous  faith  that  read  the  greatness 
of  God  into  all  the  weaknesses  of  men.     But  take  it  all  in 


52     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

all,  Cromwell's  religion  was  blended  with  the  world  in  a 
remarkably  successful  manner. 

What  was  Cromwell's  political  theory?  What  was 
his  policy?  The  truest  answer  would  be  to  say  that  he 
had  none.  A  few  moments'  thought  will  show  that  there 
should  be  no  reason  for  surprise  that  such  was  his  posi- 
tion. For  when  the  struggle  with  the  King  definitely 
commenced,  Oliver  had  shown  no  signs  of  any  particular 
bent  for  public  life.  We  have  seen  that  his  early  char- 
acteristic was  religious  melancholy,  and  he  was  more 
occupied  in  saving  his  soul  than  the  nation.  By  one  of 
those  strange  chances  that  become  important,  this 
religious  chaos  ended  by  making  Cromwell  the  best  re- 
cruiting officer  in  England;  and  he  found  himself  at  the 
head  of  the  picked  division  of  the  Parliamentary  army. 
It  was  partly  his  artist's  eye  for  the  reality  of  facts — 
the  capacity  of  seeing  things  as  they  are — on  a  field  of 
battle;  partly  the  great  driving  force  of  his  religious 
convictions,  which  had  now  taken  the  place  of  his  doubts; 
partly  his  native  superiority  of  brain;  all  together  these 
made  Cromwell  the  finest  soldier  in  England.  During 
a  civil  war  the  finest  soldier  quite  naturally  soon  finds 
himself  the  commander  of  the  nation:  and  so  it  happened 
in  this  case. 

Cromwell  suddenly  found  himself  faced  with  the  prob- 
lem of  governing  the  nation  he  had  conquered  in  the  field. 
It  was  an  embarrassing  situation,  and  Cromwell  never 
mastered  the  problem  or  escaped  from  the  embarrass- 
ment. On  the  day  he  died  he  seems  to  have  been  still 
without  any  definite  policy  for  the  government  of 
England,  hie  had  always  been  living  from  hand  to 
mouth ;  faced  with  a  daily  practical  fact  which  might  well 


OLIVER  CROMJVELL  53 

have  driven  all  theory  out  of  his  head.  The  urgent  daily 
question  was  how  to  keep  In  power — how,  even,  to  pro- 
tect himself  from  being  murdered  by  the  Royalists,  or  by 
the  fanatical  democrats  who  began  to  think  that  Crom- 
well was  standing  between  them  and  the  Fifth  Monarchy 
of  the  Saints.  Cromwell  began  politics  with  the  elemen- 
tary desire  to  crush  his  Royalist  opponents  on  the  battle- 
field: he  ended  his  career  with  the  still  more  elementary 
desire  to  keep  himself  from  being  crushed  again  by  the 
enemy  he  had  once  beaten — and  still  more  difficult  was 
the  work  of  surviving  the  attacks  of  the  men  who  had 
fought  to  place  him  in  power.  It  was  not  really  a  political 
problem  at  all,  in  the  sense  of  a  plan  of  social  construc- 
tion. It  was  almost  a  purely  personal  puzzle.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  Cromwell  was  clearly  convinced  that  he 
was  struggling  for  the  good  of  England,  of  which  he 
sincerely  believed  he  was  the  most  useful  servant.  But 
he  was,  nevertheless,  a  servant  who  had  no  time  to 
attend  to  the  most  important  household  duties,  because 
he  was  compelled  to  spend  his  whole  time  clinging  to  the 
roof  to  prevent  its  being  blown  off  by  the  gale.  Such  an 
urgent  necessity  was  far  from  conducive  to  methodical 
study  of  political  and  economic  laws. 

Oliver  Cromwell  certainly  had  great  practical  wisdom. 
There  was  little  that  anyone  could  tell  him  concerning 
the  mind  of  man  that  he  had  not  already  fathomed  with 
one  of  his  penetrating  glances.  Careful  observers  noted 
that  he  had  a  wonderful  way  of  gathering  Information 
from  others  without  revealing  his  own  opinions — the 
most  dangerous  of  all  the  gifts  by  which  a  politician  can 
strike  his  prey.  This  capacity  for  common-sense  and 
practical  insight  gave  Cromwell  the  power  to  solve  the 


54     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

day-by-day  problems,  as  they  arose,  with  considerable 
success.  But  to  face  the  facts — instead  of  the  high  phi- 
losophy with  which  some  of  the  historians  have  concealed 
Cromwell — the  chief  concern  of  this  statesman  was  to 
persuade  the  army  to  keep  loyal  and  to  turn  out  what- 
ever Parliament  the  Protector  ordered  them  to  push 
through  the  doors  of  Westminster.  Cromwell  began  as 
a  military  policeman  and  he  ended  as  one. 

This  man  who  set  out  to  crush  the  King  because 
Charles  was  a  despot,  found,  when  he  had  to  act  as 
chief  governor  of  England  himself,  that  the  only  way  to 
proceed  was  by  calling  his  soldiers  into  the  House  when- 
ever he  failed  to  convert  the  members  by  logic.  As  early 
as  August  1647  we  find  Cromwell  dictating  to  the  Com- 
mons (with  twenty  thousand  men  behind  him)  who 
should  sit  in  their  House;  and  the  objectionable  members 
had  to  leave  on  his  orders.  Of  course,  Cromwell  at  this 
time  was  not  in  official  control  of  the  army;  but  it  was 
his  creation,  and  Fairfax  was  practically  the  follower,  not 
the  superior,  of  his  lieutenant.  The  next  year  came 
Pride's  Purge,  when  a  hundred  and  forty  of  those  who 
were  left  of  the  Long  Parliament  were  driven  away  by 
armed  men,  leaving  a  Rump  of  about  fifty  members. 
Cromwell  said  he  did  not  know  of  this  until  it  was  done 
— which  was  probably  a  lie — "but  since  it  was  done  he 
was  glad  of  it,  and  would  endeavour  to  maintain  it." 
When  the  driven  members  demanded  to  know  "By  what 
law?"  this  had  been  ordered,  Hugh  Peters — the  fanatical 
chaplain — informed  them,  "It  is  by  the  law  of  Necessity 
truly,  by  the  power  of  the  Sword."  What  he  meant  was 
that  there  was  no  other  way  of  getting  Charles's  head  cut 
off.     Then  came  the  brute  force  of  1652;  when  Crom- 


OLIVER  C  ROM  IF  ELL  55 

well,    sitting   among   them,    told    the    members    that    re- 
mained:    "I  say  you  are  no  Parliament.     Come,  come, 
we  have  had  enough  of  this.   ...    It  is  not  fit  that  you 
should  sit  here  any  longer";  and  calling  in  iiis  troopers, 
he  ordered  them  to  clear  the  House.     He  hurled   one 
epithet  after  another  in  their  faces.     "Some  of  you  are 
drunkards   .   .   .   lewd-livers   .   .   .   corrupt,      unjust     per- 
sons."    It  was  all  probably  true — but  Cromwell  was  gov- 
erning England   by   soldiers,   which   Charles   Stuart   had 
never  dared   to   do   so   thoroughly.      Remember,   this   is 
already   the    third    time    that    Cromwell's    troopers    had 
cleared  the  House  of   Commons.      Cromwell  was  right 
when  he  declared:     "Not  a  dog  barked  at  their  going"; 
for  they  were  as  rotten  an  assembly  as  England  has  seen; 
and  their  military  ejector  need  not  have  wasted  on  them 
the  pious  words  of  half-apology  with  which  he  pursued 
them  as  they  went  through  the  door:     "I  have  sought 
the  Lord  night  and  day,  that  He  would  rather  slay  me 
than  put  me  upon  the  doing  this  work." 

There  was  nothing  left  of  the  Parliament  by  this  last 
Purge;  and  Cromwell,  after  locking  the  door  and  placing 
the  key  in  his  pocket,  immediately  marched  round  to  the 
Council  of  State  and  showed  them  the  door  also.  Let  no 
one  imagine  that  the  people  of  England  had  any  objection 
to  losing  their  Parliament  and  Council.  On  the  contrary. 
Professor  Firth  tells  us:  "For  a  few  weeks  Cromwell 
was  the  most  popular  man  in  the  nation."  The  army, 
being  now  the  only  ruling  Estate  that  was  left  in  practice, 
had  to  consider  itself  rather  seriously  from  the  theoretical 
point  of  view.  It  announced  that  "God  by  their  victories 
had  so  called  them  to  look  after  the  government  of  the 
land,  and  so  entrusted  them  with  the  welfare  of  all  this 


56     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

people  here,  that  they  were  responsible  for  it,  and  might 
not  in  conscience  stand  still  while  anything  was  done 
which  they  thought  was  against  the  interest  of  the  people 
of  God."  It  was  a  simple  creed,  and  was  probably  sin- 
cerely believed  by  its  expounders.  But  it  had  its  weak 
places  as  a  constitution  for  a  democracy.  However,  it 
was  still  more  startling  when  Cromwell,  the  "Lord  Gen- 
eral and  Commander-in-Chief  of  all  the  Armies  and 
forces  raised  and  to  be  raised"  (it  is  almost  oriental 
in  the  flavour  of  its  style),  called  the  next  Parliament 
himself.  It  was  a  strange  outcome  of  this  democratic 
revolution  that  it  should  have  reduced  the  franchise  of 
English  freemen  to  exactly  one ! 

Cromwell  told  his  Parliament — for  it  was  his,  not 
England's — that  it  was  to  rule  the  land  (so  far  as  the 
"Instrument  of  Government"  drafted  by  the  army  offi- 
cers allowed)  until  the  people  were  fit  to  elect  represen- 
tatives of  their  own.  At  what  particular  moment  in  the 
future  that  was  likely  to  happen,  Cromwell  did  not  men- 
tion in  his  opening  speech.  For  the  moment  he  seemed 
satisfied;  and  this  speech  is  full  of  most  enthusiastic 
hopes.  "Jesus  Christ  is  owned  this  day  by  the  Call  of 
You.  .  .  .  God  manifests  this  to  be  the  day  of  the  power 
of  Christ;  having  through  so  much  blood  and  so  much 
trial  as  hath  been  upon  these  nations,  made  this  to  be 
one  of  the  great  issues  thereof:  to  have  His  people 
called  to  the  Supreme  Authority.  .  .  .  We  have  not 
allowed  ourselves  the  choice  of  one  person  in  whom  we 
had  not  this  good  hope,  that  there  was  in  him  faith  in 
Jesus  Christ,  and  love  to  all  His  people  and  Saints." 
This  was  Cromwell's  avowed  policy  and  practice  on  the 
first  occasion  when  he  had  anything  like  a  free  choice. 


OLIVER  CROMIVELL  57 

He  chose  a  House  of  Saints.  What  followed  was  a 
tragic  comedy.  In  a  few  weeks  Cromwell  was  writing  to 
his  friends:  "I  am,  in  my  temptation,  ready  to  say,  Oh 
would  I  had  wings  like  a  dove,  then  would  I  fly  away 
and  be  at  rest.  ...  I  would  hasten  my  escape  from  the 
unruly  storms  and  tempest."  Before  six  months  had 
passed  all  the  members  who  would  not  sign  a  resignation 
were  turned  out  of  the  House  by  Cromwell's  soldiers. 
They  pleaded  that  they  were  fitly  engaged  in  seeking  the 
Lord — to  which  the  colonel  in  charge  of  the  eviction 
party  replied  with  the  curt  information:  "Then  you 
may  go  elsewhere,  for  to  my  certain  knowledge  He  has 
not  been  here  these  many  years."  If  Charles  Stuart's 
ghost  heard  those  words,  he  must  have  rejoiced  exceed- 
ingly. 

It  is  on  facts  such  as  these  that  we  have  to  found  our 
knowledge  of  Cromwell's  political  policy.  It  is  obvious 
that  the  ordinary  laws  of  sociology  will  not  take  us  very 
far.  Half  the  time  they  would  justify  us  in  deciding 
that  Cromwell  was  a  fool  in  a  dream;  the  rest  of  the  time 
one  is  tempted  to  label  him  a  knave — which  would  be 
altogether  unjust.  What,  in  the  name  of  sanity,  are  we 
to  make  of  a  man  who  was  trying  to  save  England  by 
electing  Barebones'  Parliament?  Nevertheless,  nothing 
could  have  been  more  natural:  Cromwell  was  a  religious 
maniac  and  the  general  of  an  armed  force.  So  he  turned 
out  his  opponents  with  his  swords,  and  put  the  best  saints 
he  could  procure  in  their  place.  He  did  exactly  what 
one  would  expect  of  a  man  who  was  acting  up  to  his  con- 
victions. 

A  general  opinion  by  this  time  had  arisen  that  if  Crom- 
well did  whatever  he  liked    (by  armed  force)    then  he 


58     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

might  as  well  be  called  by  some  appropriate  title.  So  he 
was  declared  Lord  Protector  by  a  written  constitution 
which  obliged  him  to  call  a  Parliament  and  consult  a 
Council  of  State.  The  Parliament  was  to  be  elected  by 
men  possessing  property  worth  two  hundred  pounds; 
which,  of  course,  rigidly  kept  it  to  the  Middle  Class,  that 
alone  held  such  sums  at  that  period — for  it  meant  a  far 
higher  value  than  the  same  sum  would  mean  now.  And, 
mirabile  dictu,  these  men  who  had  risked  their  lives  be- 
cause Charles  Stuart  raised  taxes  without  the  approval 
of  the  nation,  allowed  the  Protector  and  his  Council  to 
collect  a  revenue  for  ordinary  expenditure  without  the 
consent  of  Parliament!  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  new 
Council  was  very  efficient;  and  before  the  Parliament 
arrived  the  Protector  got  through  a  lot  of  sensible  busi- 
ness; just  as  Strafford  had  done  good  work  during  the 
eleven  years  when  Charles  ruled  without  a  Parliament. 
Of  course,  Strafford  was  a  statesman  and  not  a  fanatic; 
so  his  efforts  were  better  than  Cromwell's,  who  wasted 
a  deal  of  time  over  matters  which  only  worried  the 
troubled  minds  of  Puritans.  Cromwell  and  his  Council 
were  scheming  to  put  an  end  to  swearing  and  cock- 
fighting,  gaming  and  adultery;  for  the  last  of  which  they 
enacted  capital  punishment — with  the  result  that  sane 
jurymen  flatly  refused  to  declare  anyone  guilty  even  with 
the  clearest  evidence;  whereas  Strafford's  Council  had 
spent  its  time  in  administering  the  Poor  Laws  for  the 
advantage  of  the  unemployed  and  the  sick.  But,  although 
he  had  no  great  grasp  of  the  problems  of  State,  on  the 
whole  Cromwell  showed  common  sense  during  his  brief 
interval  of  absolute  rule.  It  is  fairly  clear  that  he  would 
£ven  have  tolerated  the   Catholic  religion  had  it  been 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  59 

within  his  power  to  convert  a  more  bigoted  nation;  he 
was  much  attracted  by  George  Fox,  the  Quaker,  and  his 
creed,  and  many  prisoners  of  that  sect  were  released. 
But  for  a  man  who  professed  Toleration,  Cromwell  was 
hopelessly  illogical.  It  was  Vane  and  Milton,  and  such 
as  they,  who  really  believed  in  liberty  of  conscience,  and 
declared  that  the  Government  had  no  right  to  interfere 
in  any  way  with  questions  of  religion.  Cromwell  was 
broader  in  his  practice  than  his  theory;  but  he  was  no 
philosopher  to  lead  his  country  towards  higher  thinking. 
It  is  perhaps  necessary  that  someone  should  restrain  the 
public  conscience  within  limits.  In  that  case,  if  a  ruler 
had  to  draw  the  line  of  liberty,  it  is  probable  that  Charles 
and  Strafford  would  have  proved  more  generous  con- 
trollers than  Cromwell.  Certainly,  whatever  we  may 
think  to-day,  at  the  time  in  question  the  nation  soon 
decided  that  it  would  bring  back  the  Stuart  tyranny  at 
all  costs. 

The  first  Parliament  of  the  formal  Protectorate  met 
in  September  1654;  and  its  first  movement  toward  demo- 
cratic liberty  was  to  prevent  one  hundred  of  the  elected 
members  taking  their  seats.  Not  unnaturally  the  Level- 
lers joined  the  Cavaliers  in  pulling  down  a  Government 
which  was  making  the  democrats  look  ridiculous  and  was 
filling  the  Royalists  with  hope.  Cromwell  met  the  situ- 
ation in  the  way  one  would  expect  from  his  character. 
He  divided  England  into  twelve  districts,  and  placed  a 
Major-General  over  each.  And  when  from  all  sides 
arose  angry  protests,  Cromwell  had  the  want  of  humour 
(shall  we  say?)  to  ask  one  of  the  protestors:  "Why 
will  you  not  own  this  Government  to  be  a  legal  Govern- 
ment?"     To   which   question   came   the    obvious    reply: 


6o     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

"Because  it  seems  to  me  to  be  in  substance  a  re-establish- 
ment of  that  which  we  all  engaged  against,  and  had  with 
a  great  expense  of  blood  and  treasure  abolished."  When 
the  democratic-autocrat  asked  with  innocent  ignorance 
what  it  was  they  wanted,  again  came  a  reply  which 
would  have  crushed  a  more  sensitive  man :  "That  which 
we  fought  for,  that  the  nation  might  be  governed  by  its 
own  consent."  Cromwell's  final  question  was  truly 
pathetic:  "But  where  shall  we  find  that  consent?"  It 
was  almost  a  sob  of  appeal  from  one  who  had  honestly 
tried  to  find  national  safety  and  good  government — 
and,  instead,  had  plunged  from  one  morass  into  the  next. 
He  was  like  a  lost  traveller  trying  to  cross  a  bog  in  the 
dark. 

Cromwell  dissolved  this  first  Parliament  of  the  Pro- 
tectorate the  moment  the  time  specified  in  the  Constitu- 
tion allowed — it  was  almost  his  first  regard  for  the  Con- 
stitution!  The  second  Parliament  was  called  in  1656  for 
the  same  reason  that  compelled  Charles  to  summon  his 
Parliaments — he  wanted  money  to  carry  on  a  war,  with 
Spain  in  this  case.  But,  exactly  as  in  Charles's  days, 
the  electors  were  wild  with  indignation  against  arbitrary 
government  (in  this  case  major-generals,  who  were  in- 
finitely worse  than  shipmoney  collectors)  ;  and,  against  a 
national  cry  of  "No  courtiers  nor  swordsmen!"  the  in- 
triguing major-generals  were  helpless  when  they  tried 
to  control  the  choice  of  representatives.  So  many  ene- 
mies of  the  Government  were  returned  that  again  a 
hundred  of  them  were  kept  from  entering  the  House. 
There  is  not  a  single  instance  of  Cromwell  daring  to 
face  the  members  as  they  had  been  chosen  by  the  electors. 
He  either  kept  them  out  at  the  beginning  or  he  had  to 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  6i 

drive  them  out  at  the  end.  Never  once  did  Cromwell 
rule  England  by  the  free  consent  of  a  majority  of  the 
legal  electorate — not  to  mention  the  will  of  the  whole 
people,  though  perhaps  not  many  Governments  could 
claim  that  virtue. 

During  the  rest  of  his  Protectorate  Cromwell  was 
engaged  in  a  subtle  contest  of  wits,  acting  as  the  central 
buffer  between  the  moderate  Parliamentarians  and  the 
extreme  revolutionaries;  a  struggle  which  took,  the  form 
of  the  question  whether  the  Protector  should  call  himself 
King.  Seeing  that  the  Protectorate  was  being  supported 
and  controlled  by  the  swords  and  guns  of  the  army,  it 
would  have  been  almost  a  sign  of  weakness  to  revert  to 
a  monarchy;  even  William  the  Conqueror  paid  more 
attention  to  democratic  forms  than  Cromwell  was  doing. 
It  was,  indeed,  the  moderate  party  of  lawyers  and 
'merchants  (and  not  Cromwell)  who  first  suggested  that 
the  Protector  should  be  offered  a  fully  jewelled  crown; 
for  by  this  time  they  had  discovered  that  it  was  better 
to  be  governed  by  one  king  than  by  five  hundred  army 
officers  and  political  adventurers.  Besides,  Cromwell's 
system  was  turning  into  something  strangely  near  a 
colossal  farce.  When  even  his  own  supporters  began 
to  resent  his  taxation,  and  he  was  told  that  "  'Tis  against 
the  will  of  the  nation;  there  will  be  nine  in  ten  against 
you";  Cromwell  replied:  "But  what  if  I  should  disarm 
the  nine  and  put  a  sword  in  the  tenth  man's  hand? 
Would  not  that  do  the  business?"  It  was  the  most 
haughtily  despotic  answer  in  history.  It  was  magnificent 
— and  in  this  case  it  was  war.  But,  whatever  it  was,  it 
was  not  popular  government;  and  it  was  clear  that  the 
Great    Rebellion    must    soon    dissolve    in    laughter — if 


62     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

Englishmen  had  any  sense  of  humour  left  after  ten 
years  of  Puritan  rule.  They  had  started  by  cutting  off 
Strafford's  head  because  they  said  he  was  plotting  to 
rule  England  by  an  Irish  army.  They  were  now  offering 
to  make  Cromwell  a  king — because  he  had  done  what 
Strafford  had  failed  in  doing. 

Since,  therefore,  there  was  little  difference  between 
the  methods  by  which  Strafford  and  Cromwell  (as  repre- 
senting the  two  great  rival  parties  of  the  Civil  War) 
tried  to  accomplish  their  ends,  we  are  thrown  back  in 
our  judgment  on  the  question  whether  Cromwell  made 
any  better  use  of  his  power,  when  he  won  it,  than  Straf- 
ford had  done.  Compared  with  the  bulk  of  his  fellow- 
politicians,  Cromwell  was  a  broad-minded  man,  both  in 
his  social  and  his  religious  policy.  Nevertheless  his  early 
training  had  been  narrow,  and  he  never  fully  conceived 
of  the  nation  as  a  whole;  but,  in  the  main,  thought  in 
terms  of  his  own  social  set.  Essentially  he  remained  the 
statesman  of  the  Middle  Classes.  He  was  not  a  man 
of  theory.  When  asked  by  the  soldiers  to  say  what  he 
thought  of  universal  suffrage,  he  practically  refused  to 
discuss  it  in  the  abstract.  He  said  it  "did  tend  very 
much  to  anarchy" ;  and  therefore  he  objected  to  Colonel 
Rainborow's  proposal  to  give  a  vote  to  "the  poor  man, 
the  meanest  man  in  the  kingdom."  Cromwell  would  go 
no  further  than  to  hedge,  as  politicians  have  always 
hedged  throughout  history;  he  said  he  would  be  glad  to 
agree  to  a  "reasonable  extension  of  the  franchise." 
Colonel  Rainborow  had  put  the  case:  "I  do  think  that 
the  poorest  man  in  England  is  not  at  all  bound  in  a 
strict  sense  to  the  Government  that  he  hath  not  had  a 
voice   to   put  himself  under."      For   Cromwell   to   have 


OLIVER  CROMJVELL  63 

admitted  such  a  doctrine  would  have  been  political  sui- 
cide. There  is  not  much  evidence  that  Cromwell  had 
very  clear  opinions  concerning  these  social  and  economic 
questions.  He  went  no  further  than  a  rather  vague 
generosity  that  showed  itself  in  the  defence  of  the  com- 
moners in  his  early  days;  but,  taken  as  a  whole,  one  is 
forced  to  conclude  that  he  regarded  his  own  Middle 
Class  as  the  element  in  the  nation  that  should  receive 
the  first  consideration.  Again  and  again  through  his 
career  (especially  in  his  relations  with  the  radical  agi- 
tators of  the  army)  we  find  him  apparently  heading  the 
discontented,  but  really  all  the  while  holding  them  back 
by  his  skilful  handling  of  the  situation.  Indeed,  such  as 
Lilburn  openly  accused  him  of  betraying  them — and 
there  was  much  justice  in  Lllburn's  charge,  as  anyone  who 
takes  the  trouble  to  read  the  evidence  can  see.  Never- 
theless, there  is  this  to  be  said  for  Cromwell :  he  was  a 
man  of  superb  common  sense.  He  therefore  knew  very 
well  that  it  was  impossible  to  plunge  forward  at  a  greater 
pace  than  the  somewhat  majestic  stride  of  nature  will 
admit.  As  he  himself  put  it,  it  was  necessary  to  discover 
"whether  the  spirit  and  temper  of  the  people  of  this 
nation  are  prepared  to  go  along  with  it." 

Of  course,  Strafford  would  have  been  as  contemptuous 
of  universal  suffrage  and  complete  religious  freedom  as 
was  Cromwell.  Yet  there  was  a  very  different  basis  of 
thought  in  the  two  men,  spite  of  all  their  similarities  in 
practical  methods.  Cromwell  was  essentially  a  states- 
man who  would  protect  the  interests  of  the  Middle  Class 
and  the  plutocrats.  Strafford  had  a  far  wider  conception 
of  his  business  as  First  Minister  of  the  nation.  He  re- 
garded the  people  as  a  whole;  and  gave  more  attention 


64     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

to  the  welfare  of  the  poor  than  to  the  interests  of  the 
rich.  The  great  historian  of  the  period,  Professor 
Gardiner,  has  summed  up  Strafford's  character  thus: 
"  'Justice  without  respect  of  persons'  might  have  been 
the  motto  of  his  life.  Nothing  called  forth  his  bitter 
indignation  like  the  claims  of  the  rich  to  special  consider- 
ation or  favour.  The  rule  of  the  House  of  Commons 
meant  for  him — not  altogether  without  truth — the  rule 
of  the  landowner  and  the  lawyer  at  the  expense  of  the 
poor.  His  entry  into  the  Council  was  marked  by  a  series 
of  efforts  to  make  life  more  tolerable  for  those  who  were 
in  distress."  Now  if  that  is  an  accurate  statement  of 
the  position — and  it  is  made  by  one  of  the  greatest 
authorities  on  the  period — then  it  should  have  the  fullest 
influence  in  a  judgment  on  Cromwell.  Can  his  demo- 
cratic admirers  point  to  any  series  of  measures  for  the 
direct  advantage  of  the  poor,  such  as  Strafford  forced 
through  the  Privy  Council? 

The  author,  E.  M.  Leonard,  of  the  standard  mono- 
graph on  the  early  Poor  Law  in  England,  thus  describes 
the  position:  "The  years  between  1597  and  1644  are 
in  many  respects  a  unique  period  in  the  history  of  English 
poor  relief.  A  great  deal  of  evidence  exists,  which 
seems  to  indicate  that  in  many  places,  during  some  of 
these  years,  the  whole  of  the  Elizabethan  poor  law  was 
put  in  execution,  that  is,  work  was  provided  for  the  un- 
employed as  well  as  relief  for  the  impotent.  After  the 
Civil  War  a  part  only  of  the  system  survived.  There 
are  thus  grounds  for  believing  that  never  since  the  days 
of  Charles  I  have  we  had  either  so  much  provision  of 
work  for  the  able-bodied  or  so  complete  a  system  of 
looking  after  the  more  needy  classes."     This  adminis- 


OLIVER  C  ROM  IF  ELL  65 

tration  Avas  pressed  on  the  local  authorities  by  the  action 
of  the  Privy  Council;  and  Gardiner  thinks  that  it  was 
mainly  due  to  the  pressure  of  Strafford:  "It  can  hardly 
be  by  accident  that  his  accession  to  the  Privy  Council 
was  followed  by  a  series  of  measures  aiming  at  the  benefit 
of  the  people  in  general,  and  at  the  protection  of  the 
helpless  against  the  pressure  caused  by  self-interest  of 
particular  classes."  The  period  when  this  policy  was 
most  actively  pressed  was  between  1629  and  1640,  pre- 
cisely the  years  when  Charles  governed  without  a  Parlia- 
ment and  was  guided  by  the  l^^arl  of  Strafford. 

It  is  altogether  pertinent  to  ask  whether  there  is  any 
indication  in  the  career  of  Cromwell  of  such  a  deliberate 
attempt  to  benefit  the  poor.  The  answer  is  that  there  is 
no  such  evidence.  Did  any  of  the  Puritans  take  that 
keen  interest  in  the  all-important  matter  of  apprentice- 
ship that  was  shown  by  the  bigoted  Churchman,  Laud, 
who  founded  so  many  charities  in  support  of  this  prin- 
ciple? Is  there  any  exaggeration  in  saying  that  the 
Royalist  administrators  were  far  more  considerate  for 
the  common  people  of  England  than  the  Middle  Class 
Puritans  ever  were?  If  we  must  condemn  both  Strafford 
and  Cromwell  for  governing  by  methods  of  pure  despot- 
ism;  if  they  must  be  criticized  for  shirking  the  first  duty 
of  a  statesman — namely,  to  teach  the  people  to  take 
their  share  in  the  work  of  the  nation — then,  after  con- 
demning them  both  for  their  method,  we  are  thrown 
back  on  their  practical  results.  And,  on  that  basis,  the 
Royalists  might  well  be  held  as  the  champions  of  the 
poor  as  against  their  Puritan  masters.  Cromwell  was 
no  narrow  example  of  their  creed,  whether  religious  or 
economic;  but,  take  him  all  in  all,  one  can  only  repeat 


66     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

that  he  was  the  main  prop  of  the  Middle  Class  pluto- 
cratic party;  and,  on  the  whole,  put  its  theories  into 
practice — so  far  as  he  had  time  for  any  policy  except 
saving  himself  and  his  friends  from  being  turned  out 
of  office  by  the  angry  opposition  of  the  majority  of  the 
English  people.  Whatever  the  rule  of  Cromwell  was, 
whether  it  was  good  or  bad,  it  was  hated  as  never  the 
people  hated  the  Stuarts'  rule. 

In  the  matter  of  foreign  policy  also,  Cromwell  was 
still  the  faithful  servant  of  the  wealthy  class  on  whose 
behalf  he  had  (somewhat  unconsciously)  beaten  Charles 
Stuart.  In  Ireland — for  Ireland  was  still  a  foreign  land 
— he  was  particularly  the  tool  of  the  rich.  Professor 
Firth  sums  up :  "The  basis  of  the  settlement  was  there- 
fore a  great  confiscation  of  Irish  land."  It  was  not  a  new 
policy;  for  it  was  merely  the  continuance  of  the  brutal 
methods  pursued  by  Elizabeth's  and  James  I's  govern- 
ment to  please  the  wealthy  merchants  of  London  and 
others  who  desired  to  get  possession  of  Irish  estates.  It 
was  only  a  European  version  of  the  methods  of  shooting 
blacks  in  Australia  and  redmen  in  America.  Englishmen 
spare  their  feelings  of  humiliation  for  the  ill-treatment  of 
Ireland  by  refusing  to  read  its  history.  Strafford  had 
carried  on  this  policy;  though,  being  a  man  of  genius  and 
a  gentleman  at  heart,  he  had  made  the  country  more 
prosperous  than  it  had  been  since  the  English  landed. 
Of  course  he  repressed  the  Catholics,  as  far  as  he  could, 
but  then  he  repressed  most  people  who  did  not  spend 
their  whole  time  working  for  the  good  of  the  State.  But, 
being  evenhanded  in  his  justice,  he  refused  to  allow  the 
Catholics  to  be  ruined  by  excessive  taxation  under  the 
excuse  of  penal  laws  against  their  religion.     After  all, 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  67 

he  believed  in  good  government — not  brutality.  It  is 
impossible  to  deny  that  he  was  unnecessarily  cruel  in  the 
settlement  of  Connaught;  besides  which,  he  broke  the 
King's  word  of  honour  that  the  natives  should  not  be 
disturbed  in  that  province. 

It  is  still  harder  to  defend  the  rule  of  Cromwell  from 
the  charge  of  brutality.     He  went  to  Ireland  with  all  the 
customary  English  ignorance  of  the  history  of  the  Irish 
nation.     He  was  one  of  those  emotional  creatures  who 
believe   everything   they   read   in   the   newspapers   about 
the  supposed  crimes  of  another  race.     If  there  had  been 
one  atrocity  by  an  Irishman,  Cromwell,  like  all  the  other 
credulous  readers,  multiplied  it  by  ten.     Being  obsessed 
by  his  divine  mission  to  distribute  God's  justice  over  the 
earth,  he  came  wuth  the  wild  determination  to  punish  the 
Celtic   Irish    for   the  late    rising   against   the    Protestant 
Saxons.     His  first  great  act  of  vengeance  was  at  Drog- 
heda,  which  he  stormed:     "Our  men  getting  up  to  them, 
were  ordered  by  me  to  put  them  all  to  the  sword.     And 
indeed,  being  in  the  heat  of  action,  I   forbade  them  to 
spare  any  that  were  in  arms  in  the  town :  and  I  think 
that  night  they  put  to   the  sword   about  two   thousand 
men."     Is  it  surprising  that  a  hundred  men  surrounded 
in    a    tower    refused    to    surrender    to    the    English? — 
"Whereupon  I  ordered  the  steeple  of  St.  Peter's  Church 
to  be  fired,  when  one  of  them  was  heard  to  say  in  the 
midst  of  the  flames,  'God  damn  me,  I  burn,  I  burn!'" 
Cromwell  may  write  about  the  heat  of  action,  but  he  does 
not  explain  why  the  most  callous  hunt  for  survivors  went 
on  next  day  until  another  thousand  had  been  murdered. 
And  we  have  to  endure  in  our  history-books  further 
florid  displays  of  Cromwell's  firm  conviction  that  he  was 


68     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

serving  Heaven.  "I  am  persuaded  that  this  is  a  right- 
eous judgment  of  God  upon  these  barbarous  wretches. 
...  It  is  good  that  God  alone  should  have  all  the  glory." 
It  was  evidently  not  the  same  Deity  that  was  worshipped 
by  George  Herbert.  Cromwell's  God  was  remarkably 
like  the  tribal  idol  worshipped  by  many  of  the  Prussian 
professors  and  sergeant-majors.  At  Wexford  there  was 
another  slaughter  of  two  thousand  soldiers  and  civilians; 
and  Cromwell  wrote:  "God  ...  in  His  righteous  jus- 
tice brought  a  just  judgment  upon  them;  causing  them  to 
become  a  prey  to  the  soldiers.  .  .  .  This  town  is  now  so 
in  your  power,  that  of  the  former  inhabitants,  I  believe 
scarce  one  in  twenty  can  challenge  any  property  in  their 
houses.  Most  of  them  are  run  away,  and  many  of  them 
killed.  .  .  .  Thus  it  hath  pleased  God  to  give  into  your 
hands  this  other  mercy."  It  is  a  very  good  example  of 
Cromwell's  manner  of  bringing  civilization  and  the  true 
religion  to  Ireland.  But,  after  all,  the  temporary  cruelty 
of  the  sword  is  almost  more  excusable  than  the  persistent 
tyranny  of  the  civil  arm  that  followed  it  for  centuries. 
It  was  Cromwell's  conquest  that  really  fastened  English 
rule  on  Ireland;  his  is  still  the  most  hated  Saxon  name  in 
that  land.  With  the  further  ruling  of  his  conquest  he 
had  not  directly  very  much  to  do;  and  often  he  tried  to 
make  the  rule  more  tolerable  and  more  just:  but,  as 
Professor  Firth  remarks:  "Justice  combined  with  for- 
feiture and  proscription,  and  without  equal  laws,  was  a 
legal  fiction  which  had  no  healing  virtue."  Such  was 
the  policy  of  the  Puritan  Middle  Class  that  Cromwell's 
strong  arm  had  planted  in  Ireland.  He  must  be  held 
responsible  in  history  for  his  act.  He  and  his  masters 
carried   on   the   policy   of  Strafford  with   less   skill   and 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  69 

with  increased  brutality,  Gardiner  sums  up  the  Crom- 
wellian  conquest  thus:  "When  at  last,  in  1652,  the  war 
came  to  an  end,  three  out  of  four  provinces  of  Ireland 
were  confiscated  for  the  benefit  of  the  conquering  race." 
If  Cromwell  had  done  all  this  to-day,  he  would  be 
called  an  extreme  member  of  the  ultra-Tory  Party.  He 
and  Sir  Edward  Carson  would  be  classed  together  as  sup- 
porters of  the  theory  that  Ireland  was  created  by  God 
to  be  ruled  by  the  strong  hand  of  England,  and  quite 
regardless  of  the  wishes  of  the  native  Celts.  In  a  similar 
way  Cromwell's  colonial  and  foreign  policy  would  now 
rank  him  with  the  reddest-blooded  Imperialists  of  the 
Carlton  Club  and  the  neighbouring  saloon  bars.  In  the 
politics  of  to-day  the  Puritan  Protector  would  be  the  main 
support  of  the  Unionist  and  Imperialist  parties.  He  laid 
the  foundations  of  the  British  Empire — a  policy  which  is 
not  usually  ascribed  by  our  historians  to  the  Noncon- 
formist or  revolutionary  parties.  However,  that  is  not 
the  only  misjudgment  of  the  history-books.  He  was 
driven  into  an  attack  on  the  Spanish  colonies  for  the 
same  practical  reason  that  has  driven  many  new  and 
unstable  governors  into  foreign  conquests — namely,  his 
urgent  need  for  money.  For  the  first  time  in  English 
history  it  was  necessary  to  find  pay  for  a  standing  army, 
which  was  one  of  the  chief  democratic  rewards  of  this 
democratic  rev^olution.  The  Spanish  War  was  a  delib- 
erate attempt  to  plunder  treasure-ships  and  rich  colonies; 
as  the  Dutch  wars  were  waged  for  the  capture  of  trading 
supremacy.  It  is  a  weak  argument  to  plead  that  it  was 
also  a  war  against  the  hated  Catholics — for  had  not  the 
Commonwealth  started  its  career  by  crushing  the  Puritan 
Scotch   and  the   republican   Dutch?     When   it  came  to 


70     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

practical  affairs,   the   Puritans'   religion  was  always  the 
last  clause  in  the  drafts  of  their  treaties. 

Cromwell  may  have  wanted  a  republic  and  a  Protestant 
faith;  but  the  men  whom  he  had  put  in  power  above  all 
else  wanted  a  flourishing  trade.  Hence  the  Navigation 
Act,  compelling  all  trade  with  England  to  be  carried  in 
English  ships,  unless  a  foreign  vessel  was  carrying  the 
product  of  its  own  country.  Now,  seeing  that  the  Dutch 
were  the  carriers  of  the  world,  and  produced  compara- 
tively little  of  their  own,  a  Navigation  Act  meant  war 
with  Holland,  although  it  was  the  leading  Protestant  and 
democratic  State.  The  merchant  generally  leaves  his 
ideals  and  morality  at  home  when  he  goes  into  politics; 
and  when  this  merchants'  statesman  had  to  weigh  re- 
ligion against  his  masters'  interests,  then  religion  always 
discreetly  gave  way,  often  with  many  voluble  excuses  and 
explanations  in  the  language  of  the  chapels.  In  inter- 
national affairs  Cromwell  did  his  best  to  crush  the 
Protestant  Dutch;  allied  himself  with  Catholic  France; 
and  hesitated  a  long  time  before  declining  an  alliance 
with  Spain,  the  leader  of  Catholicism!  Every  question 
was  measured  by  its  effect  on  England's  worldly  power 
and  trading  advantage;  and  it  was  measured  so  effectively 
that,  to  repeat,  Cromwell  became  the  founder  of  British 
Imperialism  and  British  Commerce.  The  capture  of 
Jamaica  in  1655  might  be  called  the  first  stone  in  the 
building.  It  is  interesting  to  read  that  Cromwell  urged 
on  the  admiral  in  command  by  the  information  that  the 
expedition  was  "for  the  glory  of  God  and  the  good  of 
this  nation.  ...  I  pray  you  set  up  your  banners  in  the 
name  of  Christ;  for  undoubtedly  it  is  His  cause.  .  .  . 
The  Lord  Himself  hath  a  controversy  with  your  Ene- 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  ji 

mies;  even  with  the  Roman  Babylon,  of  which  the  Span- 
iard is  the  great  underpropper.  In  this  respect  we  fight 
the  Lord's  battles;  and  in  this  the  Scriptures  are  most 
plain."  The  Scriptures  had  evidently  not  been  so  plain 
when  it  was  necessary  to  crush  the  Dutch,  the  under- 
propper of  Protestantism.  It  was  to  people  his  conquests 
that  Cromwell  ordered  his  son  Henry  to  seize  one 
thousand  Irish  maids  and  one  thousand  Irish  youths 
and  transport  them  to  Jamaica.  The  dutiful  Henry 
replied  promptly:  "We  shall  have,  upon  the 
receipt  of  his  Highness'  pleasure,  the  number  >  ^u 
propounded,  and  more  if  you  think  fit."  Strafford  never 
quite  sank  to  degrading  politics  into  a  human  stock- 
marketing.  The  scheme  was  too  tyrannical  for  even  the 
Puritan  Commonwealth  to  carry  through,  and  it  was 
abandoned;  but  that  was  not  because  the  Cromwell 
family  objected. 

Mr.  Firth  has  pointed  out  that  the  Navigation  Act 
of  165  I  was  the  first  assertion  that  the  Colonies  were  a 
part  of  the  British  Empire;  for  it  assumed  that  the 
English  Parliament  had  power  to  control  the  foreign 
trade  of  the  American  settlers.  Cromwell  enforced  the 
clause  which  forbade  Dutch  or  other  foreign  ships  to 
carry  alien  goods  to  the  colonists,  who  had  to  wait  until 
their  supplies  were  brought  by  an  English  vessel.  But 
it  was  the  Act  of  1650  that  really  first  asserted  the  Im- 
perial supremacy:  for  it  forbade  any  trade  with  the  col- 
onists except  under  licence  of  the  English  Government. 
The  pretence  was  that  they  had  been  on  the  side  of  the 
Crown  during  the  Civil  War.  As  the  Royalists  sub- 
mitted, concessions  were  made;  but  at  first  very  few 
licences  were  granted.     Being  a  clever  man   (and  not  a 


72     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

dull  fellow  like  those  Hanoverian  Whigs  who  lost  us 
two-thirds  of  North  America),  Cromwell  scarcely  inter- 
fered at  all  in  the  internal  affairs  of  the  Colonies;  and 
he  made  several  substantial  concessions  by  way  of  return 
for  the  home  country's  privileges  under  the  Navigation 
Act.  For  instance,  the  colonists  had  preferences  on  their 
sugar  and  ginger;  the  export  duties  to  Jamaica  were  low- 
ered, and  the  growth  of  competing  tobacco  was  pro- 
hibited in  England.  Concerning  the  Protector's  action 
in  India,  Mr.  Beer,  in  his  essay  on  Cromwell's  economic 
policy,  sums  up :  "He  was  the  first  ruler  of  England 
who  realized  that  the  India  trade  was  ...  a  concern 
of  the  nation,  to  be  maintained  by  national  diplomacy 
and  defended  by  national  arms,"  and  this  writer  main- 
tains that  Cromwell  was  one  of  those  few  administrators 
of  this  country  who  have  tried  to  develop  English  trade 
by  systematic  State  aid  and  diplomatic  action.  It  is 
scarcely  surprising,  seeing  that  he  was  the  chosen  repre- 
sentative of  the  trading  class  that  had  seized  power 
by  the  Civil  War;  though  the  tradition  founded  by  Crom- 
well was  not  to  bear  its  fullest  fruit  until  the  days  of 
the  Pitts,  those  idols  of  the  bankers  and  shopkeepers  of 
London.  Cromwell's  triumph  decided  that  England 
should  become  the  nation  of  shopkeepers  that  was  to 
beat  Napoleon's  nation  of  peasant  soldiers  at  Waterloo. 
He  made  England  one  of  the  conquering  nations  of  the 
world,  whereas  until  his  day  it  had  been  mainly  that  small 
Island  off  the  coast  of  Europe  which  is  reputed  to  be  one 
of  the  jokes  of  American  geography-books.  Algernon 
Sidney,  who  saw  the  events  in  action,  wrote:  "In  two 
years  our  fleet  grew  to  be  as  famous  as  our  land  armies, 
and  the  reputation  and  power  of  our  nation  rose  to  a 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  73 

greater  height  than  when  we  possessed  the  better  half 
of  France  and  had  the  Kings  of  France  and  Scotland  for 
our  prisoners." 

If  that  be  a  true  summary  of  the  effect  of  the  Puritan 
Commonwealth's  rule  (and  it  is  surely  the  only  logical 
deduction  from  the  admitted  facts),  then  it  is  sufficient 
explanation  why  Oliver  Cromwell  has  such  a  brilliant 
place  in  our  history-books.  To  all  those  who  measure 
the  greatness  of  their  country  by  the  square  mileage,  the 
size  of  its  population,  and  the  value  of  its  exports  and 
imports,  Cromwell  must  be  a  magical  figure.  For  he 
was  the  founder  of  our  commercial  and  territorial  Em- 
pire. To  those  who  are  attracted  by  famous  victories  on 
the  field  of  battle,  again  this  man  must  be  very  appealing; 
for  he  was  a  great  soldier — one  of  the  greatest  soldiers 
of  history.  Those  who  are  attracted  by  strength  of  char- 
acter and  picturesque  psychology  must  also  be  satisfied  by 
Cromwell,  who  is  one  of  the  few  men  in  our  history  who 
owe  every  fragment  of  their  fame  to  their  personal  char- 
acter. What  power  he  had,  be  it  good  or  ill,  was  the 
lawful  reward  of  his  own  strength  of  brain  and  power 
of  will.  Cromwell  was  not  a  great  man's  son,  not  a 
king's  favourite.  Before  he  was  nearly  seated  in  firm 
power  he  was  already  the  object  of  jealousy  of  more 
powerful  men.  What,  then,  is  his  secret?  He  was  not 
the  favourite  of  a  king;  but  he  had  the  favour  of  an  army. 
The  history  of  the  Roman  Empire  has  taught  that  the 
latter  is  the  more  powerful  patron.  And  Cromwell  be- 
came the  favourite  of  the  army  because  he  had  the  per- 
sonal convictions  of  a  chapel  lay-preacher  and  the  brain 
of  a  genius. 

But  these  are  not  the  usual  reasons  given  for  Crom- 


74     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

well's  place  in  the  history-books.  We  were  taught  at 
school  that  he  was  a  great  democrat.  Then  we  should 
have  been  told  that  Charles  and  Strafford  were  great 
democrats  also.  Cromwell  did  more  autocratic  things 
in  a  month  than  his  Royalist  opponents  did  in  a  year. 
Cromwell  as  a  democrat  is  little  but  a  huge  historical 
joke.  He  governed  England  by  a  standing  army — a 
strange  epitaph  to  put  on  the  tomb  of  a  man  who  is 
called  a  leader  of  the  people.  He  is  reputed  to  have 
saved  the  liberties  of  England  from  a  tyrant  monarch. 
He  certainly  beheaded  the  suspected  tyrant — and  could 
never  once  face  a  Parliament  freely  elected  by  the  nation 
whose  liberty  he  was  supposed  to  have  saved. 

The  orthodox  tradition  of  Oliver  Cromwell  falls  to 
pieces  immediately  it  is  collated  with  the  facts.  They 
leave  us  a  fine  soldier,  an  honest  religious  enthusiast,  a 
man  of  broad  common  sense,  withal  dangerously  near 
the  border-line  of  the  insane;  and,  at  least,  a  gorgeous 
dramatic  figure  for  a  play.  But  those  who  demand 
great  statesmanship  in  a  man  who  posed  as  a  states- 
man; those  who  think  that  a  national  leader  must  do 
something  more  than  overcome  the  opposition  of  a  battle- 
field; those  who  hold  that  the  work  of  a  great  politician 
must  be  able  to  stand  the  test  of  centuries,  and  not  merely 
survive  the  enemies  of  a  decade;  all  these  will  find  Crom- 
well of  secondary  importance.  He  did  succeed  in  influ- 
encing the  history  of  the  succeeding  centuries;  but  it  is 
open  to  serious  criticism  whether  all  that  was  permanent 
in  his  statesmanship  was  not  profoundly  wrong.  Those 
who  think  it  was  a  good  thing  to  put  the  plutocratic 
Middle  Class  in  power,  by  the  displacement  of  the  Mon- 
archy and  the  crushing  of  the  labouring  class,  such  will 


OLIVER  CROMWELL  75 

regard  Oliver  Cromwell — and  rightly — as  their  first 
great  leader.  Those  who  believe  that  the  depressing 
creed  of  Nonconformity  has  been  a  factor  in  the  develop- 
ment of  civilization  and  culture,  such  are  entitled  to 
Cromwell  as  their  patron  saint.  There  are  those  who 
think  it  was  a  great  deed  of  statesmanship  to  have  be- 
haved so  brutally  in  Ireland  that  Irish  mothers,  to  this 
day,  frighten  their  naughty  children  with  the  name  of 
Cromwell;  such  will  regard  the  present  policy  of  English 
rule  in  Ireland  as  one  of  Cromwell's  most  enduring 
monuments.  But  those  who  see  a  thousand  disadvantages 
in  the  modern  England  which  Cromwell  fathered  and 
started  on  its  career  will  be  tempted  to  wish  for  a  kinder 
fate  which  might  have  kept  this  meddlesome,  strong- 
willed  man  out  of  our  affairs.  Cromwell  was  too  like 
the  bull  in  the  china-shop  of  English  history.  There  was 
a  great  breakage  and  clashing  of  plates.  But  it  is  not 
at  all  easy  to  see  what  good  came  of  it  all.  It  is  too  easy 
to  see  a  great  deal  of  harm. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    WALPOLES 

IT  would  be  quite  reasonable  to  sum  up  the  career  of 
Robert  Walpole  as  the  first  great  modern  English 
statesman  (for  Cromwell  did  little  more  than  dig 
the  ground  for  the  foundations)  ;  it  would  be  almost  as 
accurate  to  add  that  he  was  the  last — if  we  could  forget 
the  Disraeli  comet.  Whether  the  spinning  Fates  disliked 
the  cloth  of  modern  statesmanship  when  they  had  woven 
it;  whether  they  hastily  decided  that  they  could  not 
repeat  it  successfully,  one  can  but  guess.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  just  as  there  had  been  no  one  like  Walpole  before, 
so  he  had  few  successors  who  can  rank  as  his  equals. 
That  blend  of  superb  common  sense  with  rich  fancy;  that 
delicate  balance  of  rough  honesty  with  worldly  cynicism; 
that  capacity  for  hard  work  and  trivial  pleasure  in  the 
same  person;  that  incongruous  mixture  of  the  traditional 
Norfolk  squire  with  one  of  the  cleverest  financiers  White- 
hall has  ever  seen :  all  these  strange  contradictions  made 
up  a  Prime  Minister  who  stands  alone  in  our  history. 
Of  course  Walpole  was  lucky.  This  wholesome  man, 
scenting  of  English  wheatfields  and  turnips,  came  in  an 
age  when  the  moral  drains  of  Westminster  were  in  bad 
order :  still  more,  he  was  followed  by  a  period  when 
English  politics,  mainly  under  the  influence  of  the  two 
Pitts,  sank  to  a  depth  that  would  have  made  a  far  worse 
man  than  Walpole  look  bright  and  clean.  To  pass  from 
the  russet-brown  virtues  of  this  Norfolk  squire  to  the 

^(»  ... 


THE  WALPOLES  77 

fragile  conventions  of  the  younger  Pitt,  is  like  going  from 
the  open  air  of  a  country  lane  to  the  hospital  ward. 
He  would  be  an  indiscreet  historian  who  claimed  that 
Robert  Walpole  was  a  pattern  of  conventional  morality, 
in  public  or  private.  But  the  difference  between  him  and 
the  politicians  of  the  surrounding  ages  is  the  measure 
between  health  and  sickness. 

As  in  the  case  of  the  Pitts,  it  would  be  missing  much 
of  Robert  Walpole's  significance  if  he  were  taken  alone, 
isolated  from  his  family.  Like  all  healthy  organisms,  he 
was  firmly  rooted  in  his  environment.  He  was  no  freak; 
he  was  the  most  natural  budding  of  the  family  tree.  To 
understand  Robert,  it  is  necessary  to  know  his  ancestors 
and  his  descendants.  Like  the  Pitts,  the  Walpoles  are 
the  only  full  explanation  of  each  other.  We  can  no 
more  sample  their  quality  individually  than  we  can  test 
the  value  of  wheat  by  picking  out  a  single  grain  from  the 
granary.  And  as  their  first  characteristic,  it  was  no 
accident  surely  that  their  stock  had  been  unbroken  in 
direct  descent  since  they  first  landed  with  the  Conqueror 
from  Normandy;  while  Robert  himself  was  one  of  a 
family  of  nineteen,  as  his  father  had  been  one  of  thir- 
teen. These  Walpoles  seem  to  have  settled  in  Norfolk 
from  the  first;  they  had  certainly  lived  there  for  cen- 
turies— no  wandering  people,  but  dwellers  whose  settled 
abode  seems  to  have  imparted  a  like  stability  to  their 
natures. 

The  birthmark  of  the  Walpoles  was  faithfulness.  To 
their  friends,  of  course;  for  they  had  the  honesty  of  plain 
countrymen;  but  still  more  important,  they  were  faithful 
to  the  traditions  of  their  race.  If  there  is  one  thing  that 
distinguishes  this  family,  it  is  that  steady  clinging  to  their 


78     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

rudimentary  virtues  and  vices  that  can  best  be  described 
as  faithfulness  to  tradition,  as  the  survival  of  the  essence 
of  the  general  stock.  The  Walpoles  did  not  become 
famous  for  any  sparkling  qualities  that  would  catch  the 
pen  of  a  modern  journalist  seeking  copy  for  his  columns 
of  gossip.  Their  reputation  was  built  on  a  solid  founda- 
tion that  would  not  have  disgraced  a  Roman  wall;  and 
the  fagade  that  appeared  above  the  ground  was  Norman 
in  solidity,  like  their  origin.  They  had  played  no  sensa- 
tional part  in  English  history.  They  had  been  squires 
and  knights,  and  one  of  them  was  ambitious  enough  to 
reach  a  bishop's  mitre,  in  the  time  of  King  Edward  I ; 
but  even  he  could  not  leave  his  natural  habitat,  for  his 
see  was  that  of  Norwich  and  afterwards  of  Ely,  not 
many  miles  from  the  family  home.  There  was  nothing 
of  the  adventurers  about  these  Walpoles:  if  anyone 
sought  them  they  were  usually  to  be  found  at  home. 

When  the  Walpoles  wandered,  it  was  not  for  gain, 
after  the  manner  of  adventurers  in  general.  Two  Wal- 
poles, Henry  and  Edward,  of  Elizabeth's  day,  had  to 
leave  their  beloved  Norfolk,  but  it  was  because  they 
willed  to  give  up  everything  rather  than  surrender  their 
Catholic  faith.  Henry  dared  to  write  a  brave  and  deli- 
cate poem  in  defence  of  Edmund  Campion,  the  Jesuit; 
and  when  Campion  was  hanged,  Walpole  stood  by  the 
scaffold;  whereupon,  inspired  by  this  martyrdom,  he 
preached  his  faith,  until  he  too  was  executed,  after  many 
tortures  which  could  not  drag  from  his  lips  the  names  of 
his  friends.  Edward,  his  cousin,  had  been  turned  out 
of  home  by  his  parents  when  he  refused  to  renounce  his 
Roman  creed;  and  when  other  estates  came  to  him  by 
descent,  he  sold  them  and  gave  the  money  to  his  Church. 


THE  WALPOLES  79 

When  again  he  inherited,  again  he  refused  to  accept. 
Retiring  instead  to  the  Continent,  he  took  orders  as  a 
Jesuit,  and  only  returned  to  preach  at  the  peril  of  his  life. 
Even  when  James  I  pardoned  him,  Edward  still  refused 
to  touch  his  inheritance.  Of  course  it  may  be  pure 
chance,  but  one  does  not  come  across  these  tales  in  the 
history  of  the  Pitt  family.  Chatham's  ancestors  we 
shall  find  making  fortunes  in  India,  without  much  con- 
science, instead  of  surrendering  them  on  account  of  its 
prickings. 

There  were  two  really  great  Walpoles  who  still  de- 
mand attention:  Robert,  and  his  son  Horace — the 
former  one  of  England's  greatest  statesmen;  the  latter, 
so  great  that  he  could  not  succeed  in  being  a  politician  at 
all.  They  will  both  be  far  better  understood  if  we  first 
remember  one  or  two  of  the  contemporary  outlying  mem- 
bers of  their  family;  for  there  is  much  value  in  corrobora- 
tive evidence  from  independent  sources.  There  was 
Horatio  Walpole,  for  example,  Robert's  younger 
brother;  who  was  so  close  a  repetition  of  him,  that,  after 
studying  Horatio's  career,  we  shall  find  it  quite  natural 
that  the  great  Robert  was  honest  and  full  of  solid  sense 
and  very  steadily  reliable  in  any  emergencies.  For,  after 
considering  the  life  of  Horatio,  it  is  obvious  that  these 
things  were  in  the  family  blood;  just  as  it  will  be  clear 
that  quite  different  sorts  of  corpuscles  must  have  careered 
through  the  Pitt  veins.  Solid  Horatio  sat  in  Parliament 
for  fifty-four  years,  and  for  over  thirty  of  these  he  was 
member  for  Norfolk  seats.  His  politics  were  steadily 
Whig — for  a  Walpole  could  not  be  changeable,  it  would 
seem.  That  may  not  be  always  a  pure  virtue,  but  one 
wants  to  discover  the  truth  about  these  men.     However, 


8o     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

Horatio  was  too  active  in  mind  to  be  an  ordinary  country 
member.  His  great  achievements  in  life  were  as  diplo- 
matist in  many  of  the  capitals  of  Europe;  in  Madrid, 
at  The  Hague,  but  above  all  in  Paris.  His  chief  char- 
acteristics were  that  he  was  honest  and  clever.  That 
naturally  gave  him  a  certain  distinction  in  his  craft. 
When  he  was  up  against  that  slippery  eel,  Bolingbroke, 
in  Paris,  it  was  the  steady  Norfolk  gentleman  who  won 
by  sheer  intellect  and  moral  conviction,  against  an  oppo- 
nent who  had  little  of  either  quality.  The  flashy  Boling- 
broke was  a  kaleidoscope  of  intrigue;  whereas  Horatio, 
when  Townshend  fell  in  1730,  declined  the  secretaryship 
of  State,  lest  anyone  should  think  that  he  had  been  play- 
ing his  cards  with  that  in  view.  He  was  always  being 
honest  before  being  considerate  for  himself.  The  King 
and  Queen  resented  his  frank  letters,  until  they  came  to 
respect  him,  just  because  he  stood  up  to  them  so  boldly. 
One  of  his  freakish  fancies  was  a  desire  to  avoid  war. 
Of  course,  the  idea  does  not  appeal  to  the  imaginative 
mind  of  the  ordinary  diplomat,  for  if  there  were  no 
wars  they  would  have  so  little  opportunity  for  showing 
their  peculiar  skill  in  drafting  treaties  that  will  end 
them.  We  shall  find  Robert  Walpole  carrying  this  dull 
faddist  notion  of  peace  to  such  an  extremity  that  the 
rest  of  the  governing  set  arose  in  wrath  and  drove  him 
from  power;  for  the  City  merchants  wanted  plunder,  and 
peace  was  ruining  all  the  chances  of  the  bright  young 
men  in  the  army  and  diplomatic  service. 

However,  all  the  Walpoles  were  not  pacifists,  and  it 
is  interesting  to  glance  at  another  of  them,  George,  a 
grandson  of  Horatio,  just  to  observe  how  they  acted 
when  they  did  take  to  arms.     His  chief  command  was 


THE  WALPOLES  8i 

when  he  suppressed  the  maroon  insurrection  of  1795  in 
Jamaica.  He  did  not  want  to  use  force  if  it  could 
be  avoided — being  a  Walpole,  he  was  by  instinct  a 
gentleman — so  offered  generous  terms  if  the  rebels  would 
return  to  their  allegiance.  These  terms  he  persuaded 
the  Governor  to  ratify.  As  it  happened,  only  a  few  of 
the  rebels  came  in;  so  Walpole  was  compelled  to  fight. 
Whereupon  the  Governor  said  the  terms  no  longer  held 
good,  and  began  to  exile  those  rebels  who  were  in  his 
power.  Perhaps  he  could  have  made  out  a  technical  case 
in  law  for  his  action;  but  Walpole  maintained  that  the 
merciful  terms  stood  until  the  Governor  withdrew  them, 
which  he  had  never  done.  What  is  more,  the  indignant 
soldier,  feeling  that  his  word  of  honour  was  at  stake, 
promptly  resigned;  and  when  the  Assembly  in  Jamaica 
voted  him  five  hundred  pounds  to  buy  a  sword  of  honour 
for  his  services  in  suppressing  the  insurrection,  Walpole 
refused  to  touch  the  money  and  returned  to  England.  He 
sat  in  Parliament  as  a  follower  of  Fox,  and  was  Tierney's 
second  in  the  duel  with  Pitt  in  1798.  His  modest  biog- 
raphy is  quite  illuminating  on  the  family  psychology. 

Nothing  could  be  in  more  direct  opposition  to  the 
family  history  of  the  Pitts — to  contrast  them  with  their 
great  rivals.  The  Pitts,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  next  chap- 
ter, were  most  things  that  the  Walpoles  were  not.  The 
Walpoles  were  peculiarly  robust  in  body  and  mind; 
whereas  the  two  famous  Pitts  were  physical  wrecks;  and 
with  mental  qualities  which  at  times  bordered  on  insanity, 
in  the  elder's  case,  and,  in  the  younger's,  had  many  traces 
of  degeneracy — he  could  not  even  carry  his  liquor. 
There  is  no  record  that  a  Walpole  was  ever  sick  in  the 
House  of  Commons;  and  certainly  they  were  never  car- 


82     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

ried  into  it  in  bandages.  There  are  such  persistent  signs 
of  normal  health  in  the  Walpole  family,  there  are  such 
equally  persistent  signs  of  abnormal  unhealthiness  in  the 
Pitt  family,  that  a  judicial  analysis  demands  that  the 
contrast  should  be  carefully  observed.  Can  the  Walpole 
history  supply  such  a  case  of  degeneracy  as  Chatham's 
grand-nephew,  the  second  Lord  Camelford,  who  seems 
to  have  spent  his  life  knocking  people  down  or  shooting 
at  them?  He  shot  his  superior  officer,  apparently  with- 
out any  plausible  excuse  whatever;  but  being  a  Pitt,  he 
was  acquitted  by  the  court-martial  on  his  bare  assertion 
that  he  was  in  command,  which  he  certainly  was  not — 
and  it  would  scarcely  have  been  a  conclusive  proof  of  his 
innocency  even  if  he  had  been.  He  was  fortunately  killed 
in  a  duel;  whereupon  his  sitting-room  was  discovered  to 
be  a  museum  of  the  different  bludgeoning  tools  with 
which  it  was  possible  to  assault  one's  fellow-men.  It  is 
said  that  he  had  a  kind  heart;  which  perhaps  was  some 
slight  compensation  for  an  exceedingly  heavy  hand. 

Of  course,  it  may  be  pleaded  that  all  this  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  Walpole  family.  But  it  is  necessary  to  put 
them  in  due  proportions  against  the  background  of  their 
age,  and  it  surely  would  be  difficult  to  find  any  better 
standard  of  comparison  than  this  other  great  family 
which  was  their  chief  rival.  Besides,  strictly  speaking, 
as  a  subject  of  English  history,  the  two  family  records 
should  be  made  together,  for  they  were  a  perpetual 
counterweight  the  one  to  the  other.  Just  as  we  cannot 
understand  a  single  member  of  either  family  apart  from 
his  relations,  so  it  is  difficult  to  grasp  one  whole  family 
until  we  compare  it  with  the  other.  And  if  crudity  of 
distinction   can   help   us,   then   rarely  has  there  been   a 


THE  WALPOLES  83 

wider  contrast  in  history  than  the  mental  and  physical 
gap  between  the  Walpoles  and  the  Pitts.  There  is  no 
possibility  of  mistaking  the  colour  of  a  Walpole  for  an 
opposing  Pitt.  As  to  which  is  black  and  which  is  white, 
that  is  a  question  of  moral  taste,  or  the  want  of  it. 

There  are  all  sorts  of  fascinating  sides  to  Robert  Wal- 
pole that  may  seem  irrelevant  when  one  is  considering 
him  as  a  statesman.  There  is  something  very  attractive 
about  this  creature,  who  had  that  sense  of  gambolling 
which  the  healthy  man  shares  with  the  lambs  of  spring. 
He  never  seems  to  have  lost  the  conception  of  life  as 
something  to  be  enjoyed — he  was  great  enough  to  keep 
work  in  its  due  place,  as  something  to  be  dealt  with 
thoroughly  and  quicl'.ly,  so  that  the  way  might  be  cleared 
for  the  pleasure  to  come  afterwards.  No  one  ever  worked 
harder  than  Walpole;  he  seems  to  have  shirked  no 
drudgery.  There  is  not  a  letter  of  his  in  existence  that 
was  written  by  a  secretary;  they  say  he  even  copied  long 
letters  with  his  own  hand  if  they  had  to  be  sent  to  his 
colleagues.  He  was  a  wonder  to  his  contemporaries  for 
the  ease  with  which  he  handled  his  vast  masses  of  public 
affairs.  And  yet  perhaps  half  his  friends  knew  him  best 
as  the  gayest  of  company  and  the  keenest  of  sportsmen. 
The  Wednesday  holiday  in  the  House  of  Commons  was 
invented  by  Walpole  in  order  that  he  might  go  a-hunting 
with  the  Richmond  beagles.  It  has  become  a  hoary 
tradition  in  English  political  circles  that  all  great  British 
Prime  Ministers  should  open  their  head-gamekeepers'  let- 
ters before  their  official  correspondence.  If  Walpole  did 
so,  he  was  probably  the  only  one  of  the  lot  who  did  it 
without  a  murmur  of  conscience.  One  cannot  imagine 
him  ever  posing — even  to  his  breakfast  table  and  letter- 


84     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

bag.  He  was  irrepressibly  gay,  and  the  boisterous  shout 
of  his  laughter  was  a  thing  of  which  people  wrote  to  each 
other.  There  is  one  of  his  own  sentences  that  might 
almost  have  been  the  epitaph  on  his  tombstone:  "I  have 
never  heard  that  it  is  a  crime  to  hope  for  the  best";  and 
again  he  said:  "I  put  off  my  cares  when  I  put  off  my 
clothes." 

George  II  started  with  the  clear  intention  to  snub  him 
out  of  Court;  and  when  Walpole  killed  two  horses  riding 
to  be  the  first  to  tell  him  that  the  old  King  was  dead,  the 
new  King  coldly  told  him  to  await  his  orders  from  the 
Treasurer  of  the  Household;  there  was  almost  the  sug- 
gestion that  he  might  not  want  another  footman.     Yet 
before  long  George,  politically  speaking,  was  cUnging  to 
Walpole  as  one  honest  man  clings  to  another  in  a  thieves' 
kitchen.     It  may  have  been  the  sense  of  self-preservation 
that  made  Walpole  so  attractive  to  his  master;  but  the 
story  of  the   Prime   Minister's   friendship   with   Queen 
Caroline  needs  less  selfish  explanation.     The  two  had 
so  much  in  common;  above  all,  that  most  useful  sense  of 
reality — that  calm  facing  of  the   facts — that  is  the  dis- 
tinguishing mark  of  genius.    It  is,  quite  against  the  popu- 
lar opinion,  also  the  most  usual  accompaniment  of  the 
higher  imagination.     Queen  Carohne  and  Robert  Wal- 
pole have  gone  down  in  most  of  the  history-books  as 
somewhat    harsh    materialists.      They   do    say   that   the 
statesman's  conversation  with  the  Queen  was  not  in  keep- 
ing with  the  habits  of  orthodox  society — but  then  the 
nice  people  have  so  often  been  dull,  and  the  two  people 
in   question   at  the  moment  never   tolerated  dullness   if 
they   could    escape    it — the    poor   Queen    had   to    suffer 
enough  of  that  in  the  company  of  her  honest  husband. 


THE  WALPOLES  85 

She  probably  took  Walpole  as  if  he  were  a  little  secret 
drinking. 

There  was  a  delicacy  of  balance  about  their  rela- 
tions; so  far  at  least  as  the  public  eye  could  see.  Indeed, 
there  was  amply  sufficient  reason  for  their  friendship, 
because  they  so  frankly  admired  each  other's  brains.  It 
began  at  least  as  early  as  1720,  when  Caroline  took  to 
gambling  in  South  Sea  Bubbles  and  Walpole  gave  her 
his  invaluable  advice,  for  he  was  most  successfully  play- 
ing the  same  game.  During  that  year  Lady  Cowper 
was  writing:  "Mr.  Walpole  so  possessed  the  Princess's 
mind";  and,  "The  Prince  is  giiided  by  the  Princess  as  she 
is  by  Walpole."  Her  ladyship  tells  us  that  it  was  com- 
mon knowledge  that  the  Prince  was  in  love  with  Mrs. 
Walpole,  and  that  this  was  known  to  both  the  Princess 
and  Walpole.  It  was  an  unconventional  beginning  to  an 
unconventional  friendship;  which  was  to  last  until  that 
closing  great  scene  in  their  comradeship  when  Caroline, 
dying,  committed  her  husband  and  his  country  to  the  care 
of  her  old  friend.  There  is  matter  here  for  a  modern 
problem  play  rather  than  a  cold  page  of  history,  and  the 
two  chief  characters  of  the  plot  would  not  be  so  lacking 
in  the  emotions  as  the  history-books  have  written  of 
Caroline  and  Walpole.  It  must  have  been  a  wonderful 
display  of  tact,  this  subtle  relationship.  Few  people 
could  have  known  each  other  more  intimately;  yet  the 
Prime  Minister  kept  the  letter  of  the  Court  etiquette 
very  rigidly;  when  the  Queen  dined  with  him  at  Chelsea, 
he  only  entered  the  room  to  serve  the  first  dish — then 
dined  himself  with  her  household  in  another  apartment. 
When  he  turned  from  Caroline's  deathbed  to  seek  the 
goodwill    of   the   new   favourite — "PU   bring   Madame 


86     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

Walmoden  over;  I  was  for  the  wife  against  the  mistress, 
but  I  will  be  for  the  mistress  against  the  daughters" — 
then,  of  course,  it  sounds  very  shockingly  callous.  But 
it  was  exactly  what  his  dead  royal  friend  would  have 
done;  for  she  too  played  with  her  husband's  mistresses 
as  a  chess  player  sacrifices  pawns  to  win  the  game. 
There  was  more  than  cynical  self-seeking  in  Walpole's 
regard  for  Queen  Caroline.  His  flattery  rings  true: 
"If  I  have  had  the  merit  of  giving  any  good  advice  to 
the  King,  all  the  merit  of  making  him  take  it,  madam, 
is  entirely  your  own,  and  so  much  so,  that  I  not  only 
never  did  anything  without  you,  but  I  know  I  never 
could."  When  she  lay  dying,  Robert  wrote  to  his 
brother,  to  whom  even  a  Cabinet  Minister  does  not  usu- 
ally pose,  "I  am  oppressed  with  sorrow  and  dread";  and 
when  a  Walpole  put  sorrow  first  he  meant  it.  When  it 
was  near  the  end,  the  Queen  insisted  on  seeing  Sir  Robert 
alone.  It  is  clear  from  Hervey's  record  that  the  Prime 
Minister,  usually  so  glad  to  speak  of  the  honours  he 
received  in  the  royal  company,  would  never  tell  all  that 
passed  between  the  two  friends;  while  the  King  was 
as  clearly  fretting  himself  with  jealousy.  It  was  a  subtle 
ending  to  a  subtle  friendship — which  often  ends  in 
silence. 

There  will  be  many  who  will  say  that  these  matters 
of  private  character  are  merely  byways  in  historical 
affairs;  and  that  they  should  scarcely  appear  in  the  public 
picture.  The  theory  might  be  debated  with  many  pro- 
tests. In  so  far  as  history  has  been  made  by  individual 
men  and  women — the  vast  bulk  of  it  being,  of  course,  the 
inevitable  working  out  of  the  slow-growing  thoughts  and 
deeds  of  humanity — it  has  been  the  sport  of  the  most 


THE  WALPOLES  87 

trivial  of  personal  characteristics.  It  is  an  awkward  fact 
that  history  has  sometimes  turned  because  a  man  had  a 
rich  voice  or  a  woman  a  pretty  face.  It  is  altogether 
essential  to  know  that  Pope  wrote  of  Walpole  that  he 
could  "smile  without  art  and  win  without  a  bribe."  When 
Bolingbroke,  who  seemed  to  hanker  for  Robert's  head 
in  a  charger,  wrote:  "His  greatest  enemies  have  allowed 
him  to  my  knowledge  the  virtue  of  good  nature  and  gen- 
erosity";  when  Onslow  said:  "The  best  man  from  the 
goodness  of  his  heart  to  live  with,  and  to  live  under, 
of  any  great  man  I  ever  knew";  when  poets  and  political 
adventurers  and  the  most  judicial  of  Speakers  of  the 
House  of  Commons  cannot  forget  that  smile  and  that 
generous  heart,  then  it  is  necessary  to  value  these  qualities 
correctly  in  the  career  of  their  possessor.  They  are  not 
merely  part  of  biographical  gossip,  but  have  a  far  greater 
share  in  scientific  history  than  the  stately  historians 
allow. 

For  what,  in  the  name  of  all  the  laws  of  ethics  and 
moral  philosophy,  is  more  fundamental  in  a  man's  char- 
acter than  these  qualities  of  bright  charm  and  frank 
generosity?  Will  anyone  seriously  maintain  that  it  is 
less  important  for  us  to  know  that  a  Prime  Minister  is 
generous  to  his  enemies  and  loyal  to  his  friends,  than 
to  discover  whether  he  follows  Locke  or  Hobbes  or 
Gregory  the  Great  in  his  political  practice?  The  essen- 
tial facts  about  Robert  Walpole  are  so  often  matters 
very  closely  connected  with  his  private  character.  He 
was  probably  the  most  honest  Chief  Minister  England 
had  possessed  since,  shall  we  say,  Anselm.  It  is  one  of 
the  paradoxes  of  history  that  the  chief  battle  over  Wal- 
pole has  raged  around  the  charge  that  he  introduced 


88     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

systematic  corruption  into  political  life.  It  would  be 
nearer  the  truth  to  say  that  not  one  Government  has  been 
so  pure  from  intrigue  and  corruption  since  he  died.  They 
drove  him  from  office  at  last,  Pitt  and  the  rest  of  the 
yelping  hounds  who  were  seeking  to  get  his  place  (and 
not  to  change  his  policy)  ;  but  when  they  were  strong 
enough  to  appoint  a  committee  of  inquiry  that  was  made 
up  of  nineteen  of  his  worst  enemies  out  of  a  total  twenty- 
one,  they  could  find  so  Httle  proof  of  Walpole's  corrup- 
tion that  the  attack  collapsed  like  a  burst  balloon.  Within 
five  years  Pitt,  the  loudest  of  the  pack,  had  publicly  con- 
fessed that  there  never  had  been  a  good  case  against 
Walpole;  a  confession  which  drew  from  a  proud  son, 
Horace,  this  contemptuous  remark  in  a  letter  to  Mann : 
"My  uncle  Horace  thanked  him  in  a  speech,  and  my 
brother  Ned  has  been  to  visit  him — Tant  d' empressement, 
I  think,  rather  shows  an  eagerness  to  catch  at  any  oppor- 
tunity of  paying  court  to  him;  for  I  do  not  see  the  so 
vast  merit  in  owning  now  for  his  interest  what  for  his 
honour  he  should  have  owned  five  years  ago."  Wal- 
pole was  an  honest  man  in  an  age  when  most  politicians 
were  more  than  half  rogues.  It  is  not  surprising  that  the 
few  honest  men  got  the  reputation  of  confirmed  cynicism, 
and  there  is  every  reason  to  think  that  such  as  Carteret 
and  Walpole  were  cynics  because  they  knew  the  facts; 
and  being  honest  themselves  by  nature,  their  milk  of  hu- 
man kindness  curdled  and  became  a  little  sour. 

Walpole  was  chiefly  original  as  a  politician  in  that  he 
was  neither  really  original  nor  really  a  politician.  It  has 
been  the  habit  of  statesmen  to  claim  for  themselves,  or 
to  have  claimed  for  them  by  their  friends,  that  they  have 
devised  some  new  policy  by  which  their  country — or,  more 


THE  WALPOLES  89 

generally,  themselves — could  be  advanced  in  power. 
Statesmen  think  that  it  is  their  function  to  discover  new 
laws  and  new  social  ideas.  It  is  an  entire  misconception 
of  their  office,  and  has  led  to  many  disastrous  results  in 
the  history  of  the  world.  I'he  Walpoles  were  true  to 
their  family  traditions  of  simple  Norfolk  squiredom. 
They  knew  more  about  the  serious  facts  of  life,  the  grow- 
ing of  corn  and  the  rearing  of  cattle,  than  any  new- 
fangled theories  of  politics.  As  he  was  a  younger  son, 
Robert  was  sent  to  college  to  pick  up  enough  book- 
learning  to  pass  inspection  as  a  parson.  But  even  Eton 
and  King's  College,  Cambridge,  could  not  spoil  his  fresh 
intellect;  though  they  gave  him  just  enough  impulse  away 
from  the  Norfolk  groove  to  make  him  take  readily  to 
political  life  when  unexpectedly  (by  the  death  of  his  elder 
brother)  he  came  into  the  family  estates  and  the  family 
parliamentary  seat  at  King's  Lynn.  He  sat  for  this 
borough  to  the  end  of  his  career  (until  he  went  to  the 
House  of  Lords)  ;  and  the  persistence  with  which  he 
held  it  is  equalled  by  the  steadiness  with  which  he  also 
clung,  in  the  main,  to  the  methods  and  opinions  of  that 
country  town. 

The  normal  statesman,  when  he  arrives  at  West- 
minster and  Whitehall,  rapidly  fits  himself  into  all  the 
queer  intellectual  and  moral  nooks  and  crannies  of  those 
two  seats  of  politics  and  bureaucracy.  The  small  man  is 
soon  swamped  by  the  strange  ideas  which  pass  for  intel- 
lectual effort  in  this  centre  of  the  governing  class.  Even 
bright  minds  become  quickly  tarnished  when  subjected 
to  the  customary  damp  of  the  low-lying  moral  lands  of 
Westminster;  It  is  not  without  significance  that  the  district 
is  built  on  a  physical  marsh.    These  dwellers  have  a  very 


90     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

good  case  for  themselves;  they  can  prove,  after  a  manner, 
that  they  are  working  out  all  sorts  of  new  social  ideas: 
they  may  honestly  think  that  they  have  good  intentions. 
But  Walpole  was  big  enough  to  be  able  to  resist  most  of 
the  new  ideas;  he  hardly  imagined  one  entirely  new 
thought  in  English  political  life;  he  remained  a  very 
solid  and  very  slow  developer  of  national  traditions  that 
had  been  developing  with  equal  slowness  for  centuries. 
As  for  his  good  or  bad  intentions,  Walpole  was  not  the 
sort  of  man  to  nurse  his  moral  convictions :  he  was  far 
from  being  an  ethical  valetudinarian.  As  a  healthy  man 
is  unconscious  of  his  body,  so  was  Walpole  happily  uncon- 
scious of  his  soul.  It  would  never  have  occurred  to  him 
to  defend  his  political  actions  except  on  the  grounds  that 
they  were  plain  reason,  based  on  the  facts. 

Walpole's  uniqueness  in  English  statesmanship  is  that 
he  was  a  man  of  robust  common  sense,  with  few  of  the 
disabilities  of  advanced  thinking.  Like  most  people  of 
this  kind,  he  had  a  lively  imagination  and  a  delicate  sym- 
pathy for  the  views  of  others — it  is  generally  the  senti- 
mental people  who  are  selfishly  unable  to  see  any  side 
but  their  own.  They  are  too  full  of  their  own  fancies 
to  have  room  for  other  people's  facts.  Generosity  to 
others  is  the  very  pith  of  sympathy;  and  that  is  why 
Walpole  was  merely  amusingly  cynical  of  the  men  who 
were  yelping  around  him  every  day  of  his  political  life — 
when  he  might  have  crushed  them  with  perfect  justice. 
He  knew  there  was  little  behind  their  cries  but  the  desire 
for  office;  he  knew  their  ideas  were  of  very  slight  im- 
portance for  England.  So  he  calmly  went  on  his  way, 
expressing  as  best  he  could  the  simple  theories  of  life 
he  had  been  taught  in  his  Norfolk  manor-house.     They 


THE  WALPOLES  91 

were  as  superior  to  the  claptrap  of  Westminster,  as  Pitt 
and  his  friends  pumped  it  up,  as  homespun  linen  wears 
better  than  the  muslin  of  a  ballet-dancer  at  the  panto- 
mime. 

Robert  Walpole  never  got  beyond  the  simpler  tradi- 
tions; and  it  is  interesting  to  see  how  he  expressed  so 
characteristically  the  virtues  and  vices  of  his  age.  He 
was  only  prepared  to  make  the  next  step  that  naturally 
followed  in  the  national  career.  He  had  little  of  what 
the  sentimentalists  call  the  "larger  vision" — usually  be- 
cause their  mental  eyesight  is  too  bad  to  see  anything 
more  than  an  indistinct  blur,  which  they  mistake  for  a 
misty  distance.  Walpole  could  only  see  the  facts  within 
reach.  And  the  most  substantial  fact  to  which  England 
had  come  was  that,  by  an  increasing  velocity,  it  was 
being  made  a  great  international  commercial  nation,  in- 
stead of  an  agricultural  local  community.  It  was  a  Nor- 
folk squire,  who  had  every  reason  to  disregard  that  great 
truth,  who  was  the  political  idol  of  the  City  of  London 
merchants.  He  certainly  had  married  the  granddaughter 
of  a  Lord  Mayor  who  brought  him  a  good  dowry;  so 
he  must  have  come  into  close  touch  with  the  City.  Still, 
it  shows  breadth  of  power  that  this  squire  should  have 
been  one  of  the  first  statesmen  who  grasped  the  situation. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  merchants  as  a  class  were  not 
yet  admissible  in  high  politics,  and  the  game  went  to 
the  first  landed  gentleman  who  had  wit  enough  to  under- 
stand. Walpole  was  one  of  the  first  men  with  brains  to 
enter  modern  political  life.  He  made  his  entry  into  high 
fame  by  the  skill  with  which  he  handled  the  South  Sea 
Bubble.  Most  of  England  that  had  any  money  to  lose 
lost  its  head  as  well  as  its  money.     Walpole  himself  had 


92     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

made  a  large  fortune  in  the  gamble ;  and  he  kept  his  head 
as  well  as  his  gains.  The  people  shouted  for  vengeance 
on  the  Company;  but  Walpole  gave  them  what  was 
better  than  revenge;  he  restored  the  public  nerve. 
Which  was  about  all  he  could  do — for  even  the  best 
practical  sense  in  the  world  could  not  restore  a  burst 
bubble — not  all  the  king's  horses  or  all  the  king's  men. 
Walpole  had  from  the  beginning  prophesied  disaster  for 
this  South  Sea  adventure ;  and  it  must  have  been  a  grim 
satisfaction  that  they  should  rush  to  him  for  salvation. 
The  other  man  who  shares  with  Walpole  the  credit — 
if  credit  it  be — of  making  England's  commerce  one  of 
the  first  considerations  in  political  affairs  was  the  elder 
Pitt.  The  vital  distinction  between  their  two  different 
ways  of  treating  the  same  subject  will  show  each  in  his 
clearest  light.  Walpole  realized  that  the  merchant  had 
become  one  of  the  main  factors  of  the  English  State; 
and  the  care  which  he  gave  to  the  treatment  of  interna- 
tional trade  was  his  best  acknowledgment  of  this  fact. 
It  is  a  sound  opinion  that  it  was  Walpole's  clever  finance 
that  laid  the  foundation  of  London  as  the  chief  commer- 
cial centre  of  the  world.  One  of  the  few  original  things 
he  did  was  to  open  up  the  question  of  free  trade,  by 
taking  off  export  duties  on  one  hundred  and  six  British 
manufactures  and  by  removing  import  duties  on  thirty- 
eight  raw  materials.  He  foresaw  a  great  Empire  sup- 
porting itself,  and  devised  a  scientific  bounty  system  to 
encourage  colonial  exports  to  England;  and  he  added 
an  extensive  bounty  system  to  encourage  the  home  manu- 
facturer. That  was  as  near  as  a  Hanoverian  politician 
got  to  economic  revolution.  All  this,  of  course,  clashes 
with  modern  free-trade  theory;  but  even  the  free-trader 


THE  WALPOLES  93 

generally  admits  that  protection  and  bounties  are  often 
useful  in  early  stages  of  development:  and  in  Walpole's 
day  the  problem  was  to  set  English  trade  on  its  feet. 
This  Walpole  tried  to  do — and  largely  did — in  a  way 
that  the  thoughtless  Chatham  never  attempted.  The 
world  was  opening  up  every  day  with  each  new  improve- 
ment of  transport  and  with  each  voyage  of  discovery. 
Wealth  in  those  days  meant  something  very  different 
from  what  it  meant  a  hundred  years  later.  After  the 
Industrial  Revolution,  with  its  inventions  of  machinery, 
wealth  was  more  easily  won  by  building  factories  and 
producing  goods.  But  in  the  days  of  Walpole  machinery 
had  not  yet  been  discovered  as  the  quickest  way  to 
a  fortune.  The  merchant  was  more  important  than  the 
manufacturer.  If  a  man  desired  to  be  rich  he  had  to 
send  ships  across  the  sea  to  the  East  or  the  West. 
Wealth  was  something  that  was  more  or  less  mysteriously 
produced  in  the  Indies  or  America;  when  we  possessed 
raw  materials  the  time  would  come  to  turn  them  into 
manufactures. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  trade  was  then  conceived  of 
as  a  struggle  with  Spain  and  Holland  and  France  for  the 
markets  of  the  world.  Cromwell,  as  the  first  great  repre- 
sentative of  the  merchants,  made  the  first  feeble  steps, 
perhaps;  but  in  his  days  the  fruit  was  scarcely  ripe  for  the 
plucking.  In  Walpole's  time  the  subject  was  urgent. 
The  question  in  the  City,  and  soon  to  be  translated  to 
the  Parliament  at  Westminster,  was  how  Britain  was  to 
insist  on  getting  her  share  of  the  new  world-markets  that 
were  every  day  more  important.  The  critical  decision 
as  to  whether  we  should  go  to  war  with  Spain  in  1739 
was  the  turning-point  in  the  history  of  modern  England. 


94     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

The  City,  backed  by  all  Its  clamouring  pack  in  Parlia- 
ment, demanded  war.  Walpole,  almost  sullenly,  declared 
for  a  peaceful  settlement,  for  a  compromise  at  the  worst, 
for  peace  at  all  costs.  It  was  the  beginning  of  the  fight 
between  Jingoes  who  were  blatantly  energetic  to  the  point 
of  vulgarity  and,  on  the  other  side,  the  people  who  were 
hesitatingly  compromising  to  the  verge  of  courtesy. 
Robert  Walpole  was  one  of  the  few  modern  English 
statesmen  who  have  preferred  to  be  gentlemen  rather 
than  popular  politicians. 

He  saw  quite  clearly  that  Great  Britain  was  out  for 
trade,  and  he  did  not  resist  that  development;  for  being 
so  entirely  a  creature  of  his  age  and  an  acceptor  of  its 
judgments,  it  was  almost  impossible  that  he  should  have 
resisted  it.  His  almost  complete  lack  of  originality  made 
him  take  that  position.  But  there  are  different  ways  of 
succeeding  in  trade;  and  being  a  gentleman,  Walpole  had 
very  clear  notions  of  what  was  legitimate  and  what  was 
inadmissible  in  the  world  of  commerce.  It  is  perfectly 
good  manners  to  compete  with  one's  rival  traders  and 
take  every  opportunity  of  beating  them  out  of  the  open 
markets  by  the  fair  means  admitted  by  the  customs  of 
the  age.  It  is  altogether  different  to  waylay  your  rival 
in  the  dark  or  attack  him  by  superior  force  in  the  light, 
and  beat  him,  not  by  better  brains  and  better  organiza- 
tion, but  by  stronger  muscles.  One  can,  in  short,  trade 
like  an  honest  merchant,  or  one  can  live  like  a  pirate. 
The  two  methods  came  into  competition  in  the  matter  of 
the  Spanish  War  of  1739. 

Walpole  was  too  well  informed,  and  too  just,  to  forget 
that  all  the  right  was  not  on  the  side  of  England  in  this 
quarrel  concerning  the  trade  with  the  Spanish  colonies 


THE  WALPOLES  95 

in  America.     It  was  an  easy  thing  to  produce  carefully 
prompted  sea-captains   who   would   swear    (quite   truly) 
that  they  had  lost  their  ears  by  the  slicing  of  Spanish 
knives — seamen  who  laid  their  hands  on  their  hearts  and 
declared  that,   in  their  moment  of  trial,   they  had  com- 
mended their  "soul  to  God  and  their  cause  to  their  coun- 
try."     Any   actor-manager    could    have   done    that   even 
better  than  the  Parliamentary  Opposition  did  it  in  1738. 
But  temperate   men  knew  that  the  sailor  Jenkins,   as   a 
matter  of  law,  had  been  caught  smuggling;  and  that  no 
mild  measures  would  stop  him  and  his  fellows  doing  the 
same  every  chance  they  got.     Spain  showed  every  sign 
of  desiring  to  be  conciliatory  and  to  come  to  a  rational 
compromise.       The    right    of    searching    for    suspected 
smuggling  was  quite  reasonable,  especially  when,   in   80 
per  cent,  of  the  cases,  the  suspicions  would  probably  be 
confirmed.     Knowing  he  had  only  a  moderate  case,  Wal- 
pole  was  ready  to  compromise,  and  began  negotiations 
with  Spain.     He  would  prob?bly  have  admitted  the  right 
of  search.     But  the  Opposition  were  not  all  gentlemen, 
and   the    City   merchants   did   not   want   their   smuggled 
goods  discovered.     So  an  outcry  arose  that  turned  the 
political  arena  into  something  approaching  a  menagerie. 
The  Young  Patriots,  led  by  Pitt  and  followed  by  every 
loose  thinker  in  Parliament,  talked  and  orated  as  the  cus- 
tomers of  a  pot-house  would  talk  if  they  had  been  edu- 
cated at  Eton.     The  sense  was  the  same;  it  was  only  a 
difference  of  accent.     Carteret  declared  in  the  House  of 
Lords:     "  'No  search!'  is  a  cry  that  runs  from  the  sailor 
to  the  merchant,  from  the  merchant  to  the  Parliament, 
and  from  Parliament  it  ought  to  reach  the  throne."     If 
he  had  not  been  to  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  at  the  end 


96     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

of  this  rhetoric  he  would  doubtless  have  waved  his  mug 
over  his  head  and  led  the  rest  of  the  pub  customers  to 
the  Palace. 

It  had  come  to  the  crisis;  there  must  be  a  decision  con- 
cerning the  method  by  which  England  was  to  conduct  its 
trade:  by  competition  of  merchants  or  by  force  of  arms. 
Walpole  got  Spain  to  promise  compensation  for  any 
injury  done  to  British  merchants  hitherto;  but,  being  a 
fair  man,  he  did  not  see  his  way  to  insisting  that  Spain 
should  surrender  her  right  of  search.  Pitt,  and  his  men- 
tally intoxicated  crew,  became  almost  hysterical:  without 
this  war  he  saw  "nothing  but  a  stipulation  for  national 
ignominy."  Walpole's  language  drove  the  Patriots  into 
a  state  of  frenzy.  The  Prime  Minister  certainly  did 
not  tone  his  words  to  suit  their  nerves:  indeed,  his  speech 
was  astoundingly  bold  for  such  an  age.  Walpole  said: 
"Any  peace  is  preferable  to  successful  war."  Men  went 
to  prison  for  believing  that  during  the  last  Great  War. 
But  Walpole  was  not  objecting  to  a  war  of  self-defence 
against  a  nation  that  had  a  philosophy  of  conquering  the 
world;  he  was  merely  objecting  to  fighting  on  behalf  of 
English  smugglers.  Jn  short,  he  did  not  believe  in  ex- 
tending British  trade  by  force  of  arms.  Pitt  believed  in 
building  a  great  Empire — if  he  had  to  knock  down  every- 
body who  stood  in  the  way. 

That  is  the  chief  difference  between  Robert  Walpole 
and  William  Pitt.  One  refused  to  found  an  Empire  on 
brute  force :  the  other  had  not  enough  brains  or  good 
taste  to  think  of  any  other  possible  way  of  founding  it. 
Pitt  won,  as  any  man  must  win  when  he  promises  his 
nation  the  plunder  of  the  world.  But  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  even  his  own  generation  soon  realized  that 


THE  WALPOLES  97 

Walpolc  had  been  right  in  this  particular  case;  that  is, 
he  had  been  right  (as  he  almost  always  was)  when  he 
said  it  was  a  bad  policy  to  go  to  war  with  Spain.  It  did 
not  need  many  months  of  war  before  they  again  began 
toasting  the  pacifist  Minister  in  the  City  and  in  political 
clubs,  where  men  are  always  perched  in  the  watch-tower, 
waiting  to  see  how  the  cat  will  jump — for  the  jumping 
of  cats  is  the  main  foundation  of  political  ethics.  When 
peace  was  declared  by  the  Treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  in 
1748,  the  right  of  search  was  not  mentioned;  and  if  there 
had  been  no  war  with  Spain  at  all,  England  would  have 
been  much  as  she  was  after  wasting  her  men  and  her 
money.  Walpole  was  one  of  the  few  statesmen  who 
have  always  been  on  the  side  of  sanity. 

No  one  will  imagine  that  Walpole  was  a  superman. 
That  is  exactly  what  he  was  not.  He  was  the  superbly 
normal  man,  with  all  the  faults  that  appertain  to  hu- 
manity. He  v/as  not  before  his  age;  he  was  of  it.  But 
he  was  big  enough  to  represent  the  whole  of  it,  and  not 
merely  display  a  corner  of  it  out  of  perspective.  Take 
the  matter  of  religious  toleration.  Being  a  normal  man, 
of  course  W^alpole  had  little  interest  in  dogma.  He 
probably  could  not  have  said  the  Creed  forwards;  and 
might  have  accepted  it  as  placidly  if  said  backwards. 
Note  what  Walpole  did  when  confronted  by  the  problem 
of  liberty  of  religious  conscience.  He  had  seen  what 
fanatics  would  do  with  the  cry  of  "The  Church  in  dan- 
ger!" during  the  Sachevcrell  trial.  He  had  seen  that  no 
amount  of  reasoning  would  keep  that  sort  of  thing  within 
sane  bounds.  So  he  decided  that  he  would  not  touch 
questions  of  religion  in  Parliament,  for  the  same  reason 
that  he  would  not  have  lit  matches  in  a  powder  maga- 


98     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

zine.  He  would  not  have  tolerated  intolerance;  but 
when  he  was  asked  to  repeal  Acts  already  on  the  Statute 
Book,  he  preferred  to  avoid  the  problem  by  a  shallow 
trick.  Instead  of  boldly  repealing  the  Test  Act  and  all 
the  disabling  statutes  that  weighed  on  the  Nonconform- 
ists, Walpole  persuaded  Parliament  to  pass  annual  Acts 
of  Indemnity,  which  said  that  dissenters  who  had  broken 
the  law  were  free  from  its  punishments.  It  was  not  a 
heroic  way  of  dealing  with  the  problem;  but  it  was  most 
typical  of  Walpole's  way  of  dealing  with  all  problems. 

He  once  said,  when  the  King  was  pressing  on  him  an 
alliance  with  a  Continental  Power,  "My  politics  are  to 
keep  free  from  all  engagements  as  long  as  we  possibly 
can."  Walpole,  not  being  much  interested  in  the  subtleties 
of  thought,  probably  meant  no  more  than  he  actually 
said  in  relation  to  the  matter  in  hand.  But  behind  his 
mind  there  was  a  profound  distrust  in  all  high  politics 
and  all  administrative  scheming.  His  was  the  position 
of  the  philosopher  who  has  decided  that  the  world  has  a 
way  of  its  own  that  is  not  very  much  affected  by  the 
small  flies  that  buzz  around  it  as  it  whirls  through  space. 
The  will  of  the  world  is  so  much  more  inevitably  per- 
sistent than  the  will  of  soldiers  and  diplomatists  and 
parliaments.  Everything  that  one  can  learn  of  Walpole 
confirms  the  impression  that,  if  seriously  questioned,  he 
would  have  laughed  that  he  had  ever  worried  himself 
over  politics  at  all;  and  he  would  have  given  as  a  reason 
for  his  laughter  that  he  did  not  really  believe  that  gov- 
ernments and  statesmen  did  much  good  in  the  long  run, 
and  that  generally  they  did  a  deal  of  harm. 

It  was,  therefore,  only  natural  that  a  man  who  thought 
thus  would  be  very  reluctant  to  plunge  into  a  war.     For 


THE  WALPOLES  99 

one  did  not  have  to  be  a  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  to 
see  that  wars  were  very  expensive;  if  he  could  not  see 
any  ultimate  gain  at  the  end,  when  they  were  won  or  lost, 
then  naturally  there  could  be  very  little  reason  for  fighting 
at  all.  If  Walpole  was  a  pacifist — and  there  is  scarcely 
any  other  term  which  will  cover  that  side  of  him — it  was 
for  the  very  ordinary  reason  that  he  did  not  believe  that 
it  paid  to  fight.  It  is  perfectly  true  to  say  that  if  this  was 
the  basis  of  his  objection  to  the  war  with  Spain,  then  he 
was  no  more  high-minded  than  the  self-seeking  merchants 
who  shrieked  for  war  because  they  did  think  it  paid  them 
as  merchants.  They  thought  it  was  the  quickest  way  of 
crushing  their  rivals,  the  Spanish  merchants.  While 
Walpole  was  just  as  sure  that  it  was  not  the  quickest  way. 
New,  in  these  questions  of  political  judgment,  it  is  well  to 
be  very  practical  and  even  materialist.  It  is  well,  in  short, 
to  first  decide  which  side  is  right  in  matters  of  fact,  before 
one  tries  to  discover  which  is  right  in  point  of  ethics. 
Now,  in  this  case,  the  City  merchants  very  quickly  began 
to  see  that  Walpole  was  right  and  they  were  wrong.  Not 
long  after  he  had  been  driven  out  of  office  because  he  was 
considered  to  be  conducting  the  war  with  insufficient 
energy  (and  for  many  other  reasons,  all  bound  up  with 
the  Opposition's  desire  for  office),  not  long  after  that, 
the  men  who  had  shrieked  for  war  began  to  agree  that 
the  man  who  had  refused  to  wage  it  should  be  made  a 
duke. 

Walpole,  as  already  suggested,  would  probably  have 
put  his  dislike  to  war  no  higher  than  its  expense  and  want 
of  satisfactory  results.  But  he  cannot  escape  the  charge 
of  higher-thinking  so  easily  as  that.  He  thought  thus  in 
matters  of  practice  because  he  had  the  healthy  mind  which 


loo    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

thinks  rightly  without  always  knowing  it.  The  Norfolk 
squire  had  not  been  contaminated  by  the  conventional 
thinking  of  the  capital  city.  It  is  said  that  there  is  only 
one  people  in  the  world  that  always  speaks  the  truth :  a 
very  primitive  tribe  of  India — one,  indeed,  of  the  most 
primitive  tribes  in  the  world.  It  sounds  very  com- 
mendable and  to  their  praise:  but  wise  men  have  discov- 
ered an  explanation,  in  that  these  people  are  so  simple- 
minded  that  they  cannot  think  of  a  lie.  It  needs  too 
great  a  stretch  of  imagination,  and  their  minds  will  not 
reach  so  far.  Cynics  may  say  that  if  Walpole  was  honest 
it  was  because  he  was  only  a  countryman,  untrained  in 
the  niceties  of  hfe  in  London.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
the  theory  would  have  satisfied  some  of  his  opponents 
when  he  had  finished  with  them  during  a  debate  in  the 
House.  The  man  who  could  make  them  smart  with  his 
irony  and  tingle  with  his  logic  scarcely  fulfils  all  the 
specifications  of  the  rustic. 

If  this  simple  country  nature  explains  some  of  Wal- 
pole's  virtues,  it  certainly  helps  us  with  his  failings — he 
had  nothing  that  a  just  critic  could  call  a  vice.  Of 
course  his  sexual  morals  were  not  in  harmony  with  the 
written  codes  of  to-day;  but  they  were  not  very  different 
from  the  unwritten  rules  of  his  own  time,  or  indeed  any 
time.  Certainly,  what  there  is  to  know  of  this  side  of 
him  need  be  no  secret;  for  he  was  as  frank  about  his 
love  affairs  as  when  he  discussed  his  political  policy  in 
the  Houses.  He  was  as  proud  of  his  private  conquests 
as  he  was  of  his  victories  in  diplomacy;  and  they  say 
he  talked  of  them  as  brilliantly  at  the  dinner  table  as 
he  talked  of  his  other  successes  in  the  Parliament 
Chamber.     Some  critics  will  say  that  William  Pitt,  Earl 


THE  WALPOLES  loi 

of  Chatham,  was  a  greater  statesman  than  Walpole,  be- 
cause he  devoted  his  whole  career  to  conquering  the 
world;  whereas  his  great  predecessor  spent  time  in  gal- 
lantry and  sport  and  good  company.  The  time  may  come 
when  a  wiser  generation  will  agree  with  Arthur  Young's 
answer  to  the  French  peasant  who  grumbled  because 
Louis  XV  had  spent  so  much  money  in  building  a  fine 
house  for  his  lady  of  that  neighbourhood.  To  whom 
Young  replied  that,  after  all,  it  was  cheaper  to  support 
the  mistresses  of  the  French  King  than  to  pay  for  Fred- 
erick the  Great's  mistress — an  army  which  cost  too 
many  lives  and  livres  to  count.  So,  likewise,  a  wise 
people  might  have  decided  that  it  was  cheaper  to  pay  the 
bill  of  Walpole's  generous  hospitalities  than  to  find  the 
hundred  millions  to  pay  for  the  Pitts'  wars.  Anyhow, 
such  is  the  fact;  for  good  or  evil,  Walpole  was  a  man  of 
generous  living,  while  Chatham  was  a  model  for  the 
strictest  of  the  chapels.  We  shall  find  later  that  the 
example  does  not  seem  to  have  been  altogether  bad  in 
the  gay  man's  family.  For  Avhereas  Walpole's  son, 
Horace,  was  one  of  the  most  delightful  men  of  his  genera- 
tion, Chatham's  son  and  heir  was  as  big  a  fool,  or  worse, 
as  the  period  produced.  Walpole  was  not  particularly 
happy  with  his  wife;  but  he  seems  to  have  claimed  no 
liberty  for  himself  which  he  did  not  consider  hers  also; 
of  which  she  would  appear  to  have  taken  full  advantage, 
until  it  was  even  rumoured  that  Horace  was  not  his  own 
son.  Immediately  on  her  death  Robert  married  his 
mistress;  and  it  is  altogether  typical  of  his  frankness  that, 
on  his  elevation  to  the  peerage,  he  asked  the  King  to 
legitimize  their  child  and  give  her  the  full  rank  of  an 
earl's  daughter.    These  Walpoles  were  not,  like  the  Pitts, 


I02    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

always  hunting  fortunes  and  titles,  so  the  girl  married  an 
illegitimate  son  of  Anne  Oldfield  by  one  of  the  Churchills. 
As  for  Walpole,  when  his  second  wife  died  shortly  after 
the  marriage,  he  was  overwhelmed  by  the  loss,  and  de- 
clared that  she  was  "indispensable  to  his  happiness." 
Which  little  piece  of  private  history  is  one  of  many  indi- 
cations that  this  cleverest  of  men  never  allowed  the 
pomps  of  his  high  office  to  crush  one  nerve  of  that  private 
individuality  which  only  the  big  minds  treasure;  which 
the  little  men  allow  to  be  crushed  by  the  conceits  of  their 
public  lives.  It  is  an  important  historical  fact  that  Robert 
Walpole  had  one  of  the  frankest,  most  open  natures  that 
ever  became  Chief  Minister  of  the  English  people;  and 
so  it  happens  that  for  once  the  nation  had  a  governor 
who  more  often  thought  as  a  man  than  as  a  politician. 
That  fact  will  supply  the  key  to  much  of  his  policy.  His 
first  impulse  was  to  be  frank  and  open,  and  to  apply 
common  sense  before  he  fell  back  on  subtlety.  That  may 
be  the  reason  why  he  was  never  really  a  popular  man 
in  political  circles:  he  did  not  play  the  rules  they  had 
learned  so  carefully.  They  were  always  afraid,  probably, 
that  he  would  give  the  game  away. 

However,  politicians  never  had  a  more  generous  op- 
ponent than  Walpole.  He  never  deeply  resented  their 
tricky  or  their  low  motives  and  their  continual  posing  of 
public  ideals  and  cleverer  ideas,  when  all  they  were 
thinking  of  was  higher  offices.  He  knew  they  all  had 
their  price.  But  being  so  completely  a  man  of  his  age, 
Walpole  thought  that  offices  were  legitimate  pursuits  in 
public  life.  Did  he  not  quite  freely  distribute  offices  to 
his  own  family?  He  probably  scarcely  gave  it  a  thought 
whether  it  was  right  or  wrong.    The  offices  were  there, 


THE  WALPOLES  103 

and  as  somebody  would  fill  them,  it  seemed  perfectly 
natural  that  they  should  be  one  of  the  perquisites  of  his 
position.  Here  again  there  was  no  originality  about 
this  man:  it  never  entered  his  head  that  the  Constitution 
and  all  its  machinery  should  be  reformed  on  the  latest 
scientific  and  ethical  principles;  for  much  the  same  reason 
that  it  never  entered  his  head  to  discuss  the  other  prob- 
lems of  modern  science.  They  had  not  arrived  in  his 
time  above  the  threshold  of  the  human  consciousness.  It 
was  quite  another  matter  when  men  spent  their  whole 
time  seeking  for  ofl'ice,  playing  the  cards  of  their  public 
policy  just  as  it  suited  their  own  hand.  There  is  little 
evidence  that  Walpole  ever  played  this  mean  game,  which 
most  of  his  contemporaries  were  following  so  recklessly. 
In  his  early  days  Walpole  once  or  twice  may  be  proved 
guilty  of  supporting  in  oflSce  what  he  had  attacked  out 
of  office.  But  compared  with  the  record  of  the  Young 
Patriots,  and  especially  Pitt,  Walpole  was  consistency 
itself.  And,  after  all,  it  is  more  important  to  estimate 
the  value  of  his  work  when  he  got  office.  When  he  was 
in  power,  did  he  do  well  or  ill?  Did  he  do  better  or 
worse  than  Pitt,  for  example? 

Whether  the  Hanoverians  were  better  kings  than  the 
Stuarts  may  be  an  open  question,  but  there  is  little  doubt 
that  Walpole  made  the  new  dynasty  secure.  These  early 
Georges  have  scarcely  received  their  full  credit  in  history; 
they  had  many  weak  points,  but  they  were  more  honour- 
able and  far  more  intelligent  in  practical  affairs  than  most 
of  the  English  politicians  with  whom  they  had  to  work. 
Even  George  III,  who  began  by  being  conceited  and 
ignorant  and  ended  by  being  a  lunatic,  at  least  was  full 
of   good   intentions.      Naturally   these    kings    had    little 


I04    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

respect  for  the  office-seekers  who  hung  round  all  the 
doors  of  the  Palace.  It  is  not  surprising  that  George  II 
burst  into  tears  when  he  was  compelled  to  accept  the 
resignation  of  Walpole :  for  he  was  the  very  keystone  of 
his  monarchy.  But  it  is  clear  that  there  was  more  than 
this  selfish  thought  in  the  King's  mind;  to  himself  and 
the  late  Queen  Walpole  had  become  a  friend.  They  liked 
him  because  he  was  sensible:  if  there  was  one  thing  they 
could  not  stand  it  was  sentiment — especially  when  it  rang 
as  false  as  a  bad  coin.  When  the  great  struggle  was 
proceeding  for  the  Excise  Bill,  they  stood  by  the  bat- 
tered Minister  until  he  himself  desired  to  give  way.  They 
flatly  refused  to  accept  his  offer  to  resign  when  they 
pleased;  the  Queen  was  astonished  that  he  could  think 
them  capable  of  deserting  him;  and  the  King  had  tears 
in  his  eyes — poor  fellow,  of  course,  he  was  a  German, 
and  therefore  very  emotional.  When  Lord  Stair  came  to 
put  the  case  of  the  Opposition  to  the  Queen,  she  listened 
patiently  to  his  arguments  against  Walpole;  but  when 
the  Scotchman  began  to  plead  his  conscience,  the  Queen 
could  stand  no  more:  *'Oh,  my  Lord,  don't  talk  to  me 
of  conscience;  you  will  make  me  faint.  .  .  .  Do  you,  my 
Lord,  pretend  to  talk  of  the  opinion  of  electors  having 
any  influence  on  the  elected?  .  .  .  To  talk  in  the  patriotic 
strain  you  have  done  to  me  on  this  occasion  can  move  me, 
my  Lord,  to  nothing  but  laughter" ;  and  then  she  gave 
him  very  freely  of  her  mind  on  his  "patriotism"  and  his 
political  friends;  and  classified,  in  particular,  Bolingbroke 
and  Carteret  as  "two  of  the  greatest  liars  and  knaves  in 
any  country,"  which  was  probably  true  of  the  former, 
if  not  of  the  latter.  The  episode  explains  a  great  deal 
about  Walpole.     He  was  a  man  who  never  bored  any- 


THE  WALPOLES  105 

body  by  false  sentiments,  or  indeed  by  sentiments  of  any 
kind.  He  only  discussed  the  practical  affairs  of  worldly 
facts.  The  deeper  things — of  which  he  had  many  in  his 
nature — he  kept  to  himself,  like  most  well-bred  and 
artistic  people.  He  was  not  a  third-rate  melodramatist, 
like  the  elder  Pitt. 

Walpole  kept  the  Hanoverians  in  power  because  he 
considered  them  honest  and  good  for  his  country;  they 
kept  him  in  power  for  twenty  years  because  he  also  was 
honest  and  good  for  the  nation.  It  was  one  of  the  most 
rational  political  arrangements  that  has  occurred  in  our 
history,  perhaps  more  founded  on  reason  than  any  other. 
Walpole  was  in  power  because  he  was  the  best  man 
for  the  work:  Pitt  the  elder  climbed  into  supreme  office 
because  he  made  such  a  noise  that  everybody  was  only 
too  glad  to  get  peace  by  giving  the  baby  the  cake. 

Just  as  Walpole  appeared  to  have  no  philosophical 
views  on  the  matter  of  Constitutions  in  the  abstract,  so 
it  would  be  equally  vain  to  search  in  his  records  for  any 
modern  notions  of  social  reform.  It  simply  had  not 
arrived  in  practical  life.  This  was  partly  because  the 
people  were  not  yet  sufficiently  degraded  to  make  reform 
an  urgent  need — as  it  is  needed  to-day  after  a  few  gen- 
erations of  government  by  Pitts  and  Peels  and  Glad- 
stones. In  Walpole's  day  there  were  still  yeomen  who 
owned  their  farms  and  cottagers  who  had  the  rights  of 
common.  There  were,  of  course,  too  many  evils  calling 
for  redress;  and  it  is  no  use  pretending  that  Walpole's 
ears  were  tuned  to  such  cries.  He  frankly  accepted  the 
system  as  it  was  and  endeavoured  to  make  the  best  of  it 
for  everybody.  He  had  got  no  further  than  a  firm  belief 
that  if  Englishmen  were  to  become  prosperous  it  must 


io6    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

be  by  the  exertions  of  the  merchant  class,  who  seemed 
to  hold  the  key  to  the  economic  position.  Walpole,  there- 
fore, threw  his  financial  skill  into  scheming  for  the  ad- 
vancement of  this  class.  To-day  it  would  be  fair  to  say 
that  such  a  policy  would  be  purely  plutocratic.  But  we 
must  remember  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeen- 
hundreds  the  gulf  between  Capital  and  Labour  had  not 
been  made.  Walpole  had  still  some  excuse  for  thinking 
of  the  nation  as  a  whole.  Besides,  it  is  by  no  means  as 
certain  as  some  ardent  natures  imagine  that  it  is  possible 
to  do  much  more  than  accept  the  system  that  nature  is 
slowly  evolving  for  us.  Anyhow,  most  of  the  great  re- 
forms which  have  been  trumpeted  so  loudly  turn  out  on 
trial  to  be  very  disappointing.  Perhaps  Walpole  talked 
little  of  "reform,"  not  because  he  was  callous  about  evil, 
but  because  he  was  too  wise  and  honest  to  hold  out  as 
hopes  what  he  believed  to  be  dreams.  But  we  must 
construe  his  silence  on  such  matters  as  we  please.  At 
least,  it  remains  a  silence,  and  Walpole  added  little  or 
nothing  to  the  legislation  of  social  reform. 

There  has  been  much  discussion  concerning  Walpole's 
place  in  constitutional  history.  He  is  said  to  have 
founded  the  Cabinet  system,  and  to  have  made  the  House 
of  Commons  supreme  in  the  State.  He  probably  did 
both.  But  it  is  dangerously  superficial  to  attach  most 
importance  to  this  aspect  of  the  statesman.  For  both 
accomplishments  were  almost  accidents,  so  far  as  he  was 
concerned;  it  is  doubtful  if  he  had  many  theories  on  the 
subject;  though  he  recognized  the  fact,  as  is  proved 
by  his  refusing  a  peerage  in  1723,  and  passing  the  offer 
to  his  eldest  son.  It  was  only  when  he  knew  his  career 
had  ended  that  he  left  the   Commons   for  the  Lords; 


THE  WALPOLES  roy 

and,  as  he  told  Pulteney,  who  had  become  Earl  of  Bath 
(and  ruined  his  political  chances),  "You  and  I  are  now 
two  as  insignificant  men  as  any  in  England."  Now  it  was 
different  in  the  case  of  Chatham,  who  was  always  declaim- 
ing in  rounded  periods  on  the  voice  of  the  nation  and 
the  liberty  of  man.  Since  the  House  of  Commons  was 
not  particularly  favourable  to  Pitt,  of  course  he  had  to 
invent  a  new  supreme  authority  which  he  called  "The 
•People";  which  led  to  that  famous  snub  when  he  was 
pleading  a  vote  of  the  Commons  in  favour  of  Admiral 
Byng's  pardon.  "Mr.  Pitt,"  snapped  the  King,  "you 
have  taught  me  to  look  for  the  sense  of  my  subjects 
in  another  place  than  the  House  of  Commons."  But 
Walpole  had  no  theories  of  these  kinds.  If  under  his 
rule  the  Commons  and  the  Cabinet  became  the  chief 
elements  in  the  Constitution,  it  was  just  because  he  him- 
self was  by  far  the  cleverest  and  most  active  man  in  the 
Government,  and  he  happened  to  be  in  the  Commons, 
instead  of  the  Lords;  while,  naturally,  no  one  could  stand 
him  in  the  Cabinet  because  he  worked  harder  than  any 
of  the  rest  and  had  better  brains  than  they  had.  Thus, 
by  accident,  wherever  Walpole  was  became  the  important 
place;  and  the  supremacy  of  the  Commons,  and  a  Cabinet 
united  more  or  less  absolutely  under  a  Chief  Minister, 
were  the  outcome  of  Walpole's  long  years  of  rule. 

But  is  the  result  anything  to  pride  ourselves  on  to-day? 
Granting  the  argument  that  Walpole  gave  us  the  Cabinet 
and  the  Commons,  can  we  still  be  sure  that  it  was  a  great 
deed  in  constitution-building?  The  House  of  Commons 
has  become  the  fortress  of  plutocracy;  and  the  united 
Cabinet  is  the  very  heart  of  the  corrupt  Party  system. 
Do  we  find  either  of  these  exceedingly  admirable  now? 


io8    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

Cannot  we  imagine  other  developments  that  might  have 
been  very  much  better  for  this  country?  Would  frank, 
cynical,  honest  Robert  Walpole  like  his  creations  if  he 
could  come  back  to  lead  them  again  to-day?  But,  indeed, 
to  repeat,  he  had  no  intention  of  creating  them,  they 
merely  happened.  Walpole's  claim  to  fame  in  English 
history  is  of  quite  another  sort.  It  so  happens  that  this 
man,  who  is  usually  set  down  in  the  books  as  the  most 
unscrupulous  of  public  and  a  most  sinful  being  in  private, 
has  in  the  main  a  purely  moral  appeal  in  the  history 
of  English  politics.  He  taught  Englishmen  that  it  is 
possible  to  be  a  gentleman  and  a  politician,  to  be  an 
honest  man  and  a  wise  ruler.  He  taught  further  that 
common  sense  in  a  statesman  is  of  greater  importance  than 
philosophy,  and  that  most  of  the  rhetoric  of  politicians 
is  empty  wind. 

Walpole's  story  does  more  to  expose  the  rottenness  of 
political  life  than  almost  any  other  biography  of  his  class. 
He  is  valuable  in  constitutional  history  not  because  he 
was  a  great  politician  but  just  because  he  was  a  very 
bad  one.  He  has  been  credited  with  founding  new 
theories  of  government.  It  would  be  truer  to  say  that 
he  went  far  towards  making  the  governing  class  ridicu- 
lous. He  was  continually  making  the  intriguers  look 
contemptible.  He  had  no  moral  pose  about  him.  When 
he  did  protest  against  the  stupidity  and  insincerity  of  the 
system,  it  was  with  the  cynical  touch  of  the  man  of  the 
world  who  cannot  lower  himself  to  anger  or  revenge; 
he  often  got  no  further  than  a  curl  of  the  lips.  Note  the 
way  he  expressed  himself  in  moments  of  pressure.  Thus, 
when  the  Excise  Bill  tumult  had  reached  its  climax, 
he  said,  "This  dance  it  will  no  further  go."    Dance!    He 


THE  WALPOLES  109 

would  not  credit  these  clamouring  political  opponents 
with  seriousness;  it  was  at  best  a  frivolous  amusement 
to  them;  and,  at  the  worst,  mainly  hypocrisy.  For,  in- 
deed, the  political  clamour  against  the  Excise  Bill  is 
now  admitted  to  have  been  shamefully  insincere — just 
one  way  of  turning  rivals  out  of  office.  The  people 
probably  had  more  earnest  objections  to  it;  dreading 
lest  it  was  another  way  of  imposing  Government  inspec- 
tors over  them.  Now,  alas,  we  have  no  such  love  of 
freedom — we  accept  an  inquisitorial  Insurance  Act  as  a 
flock  of  sheep  accepts  a  sheep-dog.  The  politicians  knew 
perfectly  well  that  these  fears  were  almost  baseless  in 
the  case  of  the  Excise  Bill;  and  they  would  not  have 
objected  to  that  result  if  It  had  followed  It.  Walpole 
may  have  been  hasty  in  his  contempt  at  times,  but  when 
he  felt  contemptuous  he  blurted  it  forth — which  is  at 
least  a  healthy  indiscretion.  He  used  a  similar  word  to 
"dance"  when  Queen  Caroline  lay  dying — we  must  for- 
give him  if  his  nerves  were  overstrung.  Someone  had 
suggested  that  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  should  be 
sent  for  to  pray  by  her  side.  Walpole  probably  knew 
more  of  Caroline's  faith  than  most  people,  and  this  is 
how  he  settled  the  urgent  question  for  the  courtiers.  He 
turned  to  the  Princess  Emily:  "Pray,  madam,  let  this 
farce  be  played.  The  Archbishop  will  act  it  very  well. 
It  will  do  the  Queen  no  hurt,  no  more  than  any  good; 
and  it  will  satisfy  all  the  wise  and  good  fools,  who  will 
call  us  all  atheists  if  we  don't  pretend  to  be  as  great  fools 
as  they  are."  One  cannot  imagine  a  politician  who 
"played  the  game"  being  so  indiscreet  In  his  language  as 
that.  Walpole  may  have  been  right  or  wrong  in  this 
case.     The  pursuit  of  politics  was  largely,  and  still  is,  a 


no    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

game  of  make-believe;  and  Walpole  was  one  of  the  few 
men  who  had  the  pkick  to  be  frank  about  it  and  not  a 
theatrical  dummy.  It  may  seem  a  small  thing  as  a  matter 
of  constitutional  history;  nevertheless,  if  it  were  carried 
into  practice  it  would  revolutionize  poHtics  as  no  rear- 
rangement of  the  Cabinet  system  could  ever  do.  For 
then  there  would  be  three  fairly  distinct  parties  in  the 
Houses — the  dull  people,  the  rogues,  and  the  wise  men. 
It  would  be  easier  to  select  candidates  classified  in  this 
manner.  The  distinction  between  Whigs  and  Tories  is 
mainly  the  theatrical  manager's  classification. 

A  few  generations  of  Walpole's  frankness,  and  party 
politics  would  have  died  of  shame.  He  has  always  been 
regarded  as  the  greatest  of  the  Whigs,  and  in  so  far  that 
it  meant  support  of  the  Hanoverians  against  the  Stuarts, 
then  such  he  was.  But  he  discussed  every  question  on  its 
merits  and  as  a  matter  of  practicability.  He  threw  over 
the  very  basis  of  the  Whig  foreign  policy  when  he  insisted 
on  peace,  and  even  alliance,  with  France.  It  may  be 
argued  that  by  his  friendship  with  France  he  was  over- 
throwing the  longest  tradition  of  English  history.  But 
this  is  only  a  superficial  view.  For  the  old  mediaeval 
hostility  to  France  had  been  mainly  a  barons'  squabbling; 
and  in  Walpole's  day  it  was  at  base  the  outcome  of  the 
intriguing  mind  of  an  imported  Dutch  King.  William  in- 
sisted on  war  with  France  because  he  was  a  Dutchman : 
Walpole  was  quite  ready  to  make  an  alliance  with  France 
because  he  was  a  wise  patriotic  Englishman;  he  saw  that 
an  alliance  would  be  more  to  our  advantage  than  a  war — 
especially  when  Louis  XIV  had  been  beaten.  He  refused, 
again,  to  be  a  sound  Whig  when  it  came  to  religious 
squabbles;   and  told  the   Nonconformists  that  the   time 


THE  WALPOLES  in 

would  never  come  when  he  would  repeal  the  Tory  High 
Church  legislation,  because,  as  we  have  seen,  it  would 
mean  bitter  national  strife,  and  he  did  not  consider  the 
matter  was  worth  the  tumult.  He  threw  over  the  Excise 
Bill  when  he  found  that  meant  strife  also.  Some  critics 
say  he  was  a  coward  and  would  have  thrown  overboard 
anything  in  the  world  so  long  as  he  could  cling  to  office. 
In  fact,  he  stayed  in  office  because  there  was  no  one 
nearly  so  capable  of  doing  the  work.  He  remained 
Prime  Minister  so  long  as  he  had  a  majority  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  When  his  rivals  beat  him  at  last 
with  the  cry  "Down  with  corruption!"  they  won,  not 
by  proving  the  case  against  him,  but  by  bribery!  The 
Prince  of  Wales  confessed  that  in  the  two  critical  divi- 
sions in  the  Commons  on  the  Westminster  and  Chippen- 
dale election  appeals,  he  spent  "in  corruption,  particularly 
among  the  Tories,"  the  sum  of  £12,000.  Walpole  was 
beaten  because  he  was  too  honest  a  man  to  bribe.  Ship- 
pen,  the  leader  of  the  Jacobites,  led  all  his  friends  out 
of  the  House  without  voting,  saying  contemptuously  that 
it  was  all  a  game  of  party  politics,  and  he  did  not  care 
which  side  won — which  action,  of  course,  drove  the 
adventurer  Bolingbroke  wild  with  passion  to  see  his  petty 
party  intrigues  made  ridiculous. 

But  it  is  not  fair  to  judge  a  Prime  Minister  by  what 
he  says  or  even  by  what  he  does.  For  the  chief  of  a 
State,  whether  he  be  monarch  or  statesman,  is  usually 
the  one  man  who  can  neither  say  nor  do  what  he  desires. 
Such  men  must  be  judged  by  more  indirect  methods. 
And  the  history  of  Horace  Walpole,  the  son  of  the  Chief 
Minister,  will  tell  us  more  about  the  father  than  he  could 
tell  for  himself.     Even  the  outspoken   Robert  Walpole 


112     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

had  his  limitations,  and  nothing  limits  a  man  more  than 
being  a  Prime  Minister.  It  has  somewhat  the  same  effect 
on  his  character  as  putting  a  lark  into  a  cage,  or  sending 
a  healthy  lion  to  walk  up  and  down  behind  his  bars  at 
the  Zoo.  Even  Robert  probably  only  said  and  did  half 
what  he  wanted.  But  his  son  was  on  a  different  footing; 
he  could  safely  be  a  Walpole,  without  the  general  public 
spending  its  time  looking  through  his  windows  or  even 
throwing  stones  through  them. 

To  build  a  theory  of  Robert  Walpole  on  the  character 
of  Horace  will  at  once  rouse  the  fundamental  objection 
that  even  the  parentage  has  been  doubted — and  by  no 
means  on  entirely  negligible  ground;  though,  on  the 
whole,  the  evidence  is  good  enough  that  he  was  his  legal 
father's  son.  Certainly,  he  was  his  spiritual  son.  He 
revered  the  great  Minister,  and  continued  to  live  in  his 
house  even  when  he  was  a  grown  man.  He  was  Robert's 
staunch  defender — and  to  undertake  such  a  task  needed 
no  embusqiie  in  those  times.  Gathering  all  the  evidence, 
we  are  justified  in  the  conclusion  that  Horace  was  not 
far  away  from  what  Robert  would  have  been  if  he  had 
not  been  quite  so  robust  and  had  not  chanced  to  take  up 
politics  as  a  profession.  Horace  was  Robert  in  mufti, 
living  in  retirement;  merely  thinking,  when  his  father  was 
forced  to  act;  and  thinking  in  private  instead  of  speaking 
aloud  his  thoughts  in  public.  The  son  supplied  the  theory 
of  life  which  his  father  was  so  busy  in  carrying  into  prac- 
tice that  he  never  had  time  to  meditate  on  the  rules. 
They  both  had  much  the  same  foundations,  strange 
though  it  may  seem  on  the  first  glance,  for  Robert  was 
the  craftsman  and  Horace  was  the  philosopher.  If  we 
want  to  know  what  Robert  thought,  it  is  well  worth  tak- 


THE  WALPOLES  113 

ing  the   trouble   to   discover  what  Horace   said   on   the 
subject  in  the  intimate  privacy  of  his  delicious  letters. 

We  have  seen  that  the  keynote  of  the  Prime  Minister's 
policy  was  his  dislike  of  war  and  his  clinging  to  peace  at 
such  a  cost  that  half  the  nation  was  shrieking  that  the 
price  of  peace  was  our  national  honour.  Robert  Walpole 
never  seems  to  have  put  his  policy  on  any  higher  ground 
than  the  very  mundane  reason  that  war  was  expensive 
and  not  the  best  way  of  arriving  at  a  satisfactory  conclu- 
sion. But  a  few  words  from  Horace  put  a  whole  phi- 
losophy of  life  behind  what  Sir  Robert  did  in  every  day 
practice.  Yet  withal,  there  is  that  note  of  sane  mate- 
rialist common  sense  that  made  his  father  adored  by  the 
City  merchants,  even  when  they  only  understood  a  frag- 
ment of  what  their  political  leader  wanted.  There  is  a 
letter  of  April  1777  which,  were  it  written  to  The  Times 
to-day,  would  probably  bring  down  on  the  head  of  its 
writer  enough  Jingo  oratory  to  float  another  "National- 
ist" party  in  Parliament.  "I  look,"  wrote  Horace  Wal- 
pole to  Mann,  "upon  a  great  part  of  America  as  lost 
to  this  country.  It  is  not  less  deplorable  that  such  an 
inveteracy  has  been  sown  between  the  two  countries  as 
will  probably  outlast  even  the  war.  .  ,  .  What  a  differ- 
ence, in  a  future  war  with  France  or  Spain,  to  have  the 
Colonies  in  the  opposite  scale  instead  of  being  in  ours. 
What  politicians  are  those  who  have  preferred  the  empty 
name  of  sovereignty  to  that  of  alliance,  and  forced  sub- 
sidies to  the  golden  ocean  of  commerce?"  So  far  the 
case  might  have  been  grasped  and  approved  by  the  most 
practical  of  the  City  gentlemen.  But  the  scope  of  the 
argument  is  extended  when  Horace  continues,  and  turns 
to, the  position  in  India:     "We  had  acquired  an  Empire, 


114    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

too,  in  whose  plains  the  beggars  we  sent  out  as  labourers 
could  reap  sacks  of  gold  in  three  or  four  harvests;  and 
who  with  their  sickles  and  reaping-hooks  have  robbed 
and  cut  the  throats  of  those  who  sowed  the  grain. 
[Could  the  writer  have  been  thinking  of  Diamond  Pitt?] 
These  rapacious  foragers  have  fallen  together  by  the 
ears.  ...  I  know  nothing  of  the  merits  of  the  case  on 
either  side:  I  dare  to  say  both  are  very  blamable.  I 
look  only  to  the  consequences,  which  I  do  not  doubt  will 
precipitate  the  loss  of  our  acquisitions  there;  the  title 
to  which  I  never  admired,  and  the  possession  of  which 
I  always  regarded  as  a  transitory  vision.  If  we  could 
keep  it  we  should  certainly  plunder  it,  until  the  expense 
of  maintaining  would  overbalance  the  returns;  and  though 
it  has  rendered  a  little  more  than  the  holy  city  of  Jeru- 
salem, I  look  on  such  distant  conquests  as  more  destruc- 
tive than  beneficial;  and  whether  we  are  martyrs  or 
banditti,  whether  we  fight  for  the  Holy  Sepulchre  or  for 
lacs  of  rupees,  I  detest  invasion  of  quiet  kingdoms,  both 
for  their  sakes  and  for  our  own;  and  it  is  happy  for  the 
former  that  the  latter  are  never  permanently  benefited." 
The  case  against  blatant  Imperialism  and  vulgar  Jin- 
goism has  never  been  more  precisely  stated,  both  in  calm 
sense  and  in  passionate  contempt.  It  was  a  most  savage 
attack  on  the  Pitt  ideals,  which  the  son  of  the  great  peace 
Minister  had  lived  to  see  overthrow  the  policy  of  his 
father.  It  would  be  difficult  to  sum  up  more  compactly 
the  difference  between  the  Walpole  ideals  and  those  of 
the  Pitts.  When  we  find  Horace  with  such  ideas  so 
continually  behind  all  that  he  wrote,  it  is  not  an  unfair 
suggestion  that  such  was  his  heritage  from  the  family 
tradition;   for  his  philosophy  fits  so  accurately  into  the 


THE  WALPOLES  115 

fretwork  of  Sir  Robert's  practice.  Horace  is  what  his 
father  would  have  been  if  the  latter  had  been  strong 
enough  to  keep  out  of  politics.  Horace  is  the  Norfolk 
squire  come  to  London  Town  as  a  gentleman;  whereas 
his  father  had  travelled  thither  as  a  member  of  Parlia- 
ment. 

But  hear  Horace  \Valpole  still  further  on  the  question 
of  militarism.  On  September  12,  178 1,  he  wrote:  "This 
is  war!  One  sits  at  home  coolly  hoping  that  five  or  six 
vessels  full  of  many  hundreds  of  men  are  gone  to  the 
bottom  of  the  deep !  Can  one  look  back  on  the  last  six 
years  and  not  shudder  at  the  devastation  deliberate  love 
of  power  has  committed — to  the  utter  loss  of  power  1 
.  .  .  We  are  dreaming  of  recovering  America;  we  might 
as  sensibly  pursue  our  claim  to  the  crown  of  France." 
It  was  the  answer  of  Robert  Walpole's  son  to  the  con- 
tinual braying  of  the  Pitts'  trumpets  of  British  Imperial- 
ism. One  feels  that  the  delicately  minded  Horace  was 
bored  to  desperation  by  the  vulgarity  of  the  new  creed, 
and  indignant  with  the  stupidity  of  it.  Being  a  man  of 
intellect — and  not  a  mere  sentimentalist  like  Chatham 
or  an  unhealthy  recluse  like  Pitt  the  Younger — Horace 
knew  who  it  was  who  won  the  prizes  of  this  policy  of 
conquest  and  who  it  was  who  suffered  the  losses.  Many 
years  before,  in  1759,  when  he  heard  of  the  capture  of 
Quebec,  he  had  written:  "The  generals  on  both  sides 
slain,  and  on  both  sides  the  seconds  in  command 
wounded;  in  short,  very  near  what  battle  should  be,  in 
which  only  the  principals  ought  to  suffer."  That  was 
throwing  dowm  the  glove  to  the  fantastic  Pitt  boast 
that  they  were  winning  wealth  for  the  whole  British 
nation.     Horace  Walpole,  who  had  the  family  distaste 


ii6    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

for  inflated  rhetoric,  thus  expressed  his  opinion  that  the 
people  of  England  were  dancing  to  suit  the  convenience 
of  the  men  on  top  who  called  the  tune;  and  he  was 
delighted  when  the  top-dogs  paid  the  price  of  their  own 
adventures. 

With  all  their  experience  of  political  life  these  Wal- 
poles  never  ceased  wondering  how  their  contemporaries 
could  be  so  forgetful  of  personal  honour.  This  is  what 
Horace  said  in  1781,  when  one  would  have  imagined 
that  he  was  old  enough  to  be  a  little  cynical  of  lapses  of 
consistency  in  public  affairs;  he  was  writing  of  the  Ameri- 
can War:  "I  do  look  on  Lord  Cornwallis  as  a  renegade. 
He  was  one  of  the  five  who  protested  against  the  Stamp 
Act.  He  therefore  had  no  principles  then,  or  has  none 
now,  and  neither  in  complaisance  with  the  vulgar  or  the 
powerful,  will  I  say  I  approve  him.  When  a  gentleman, 
a  man  of  quality,  sells  himself  for  the  paltry  honours 
and  profits  he  must  quit  so  soon,  and  leave  nothing  but 
a  tarnished  name  behind  him,  he  has  my  utter  contempt." 
Then  Horace  continued  with  one  of  the  shortest  declara- 
tions of  human  rights:  "I  prefer  the  liberation  of  man- 
kind to  any  local  circumstances.  Were  I  young  and  of 
heroic  texture  I  would  go  to  America;  as  I  am  decrepit 
and  have  the  bones  of  a  sparrow,  I  must  die  on  my 
perch;  and  when  you  [he  is  writing  to  the  Countess  of 
Upper  Ossory]  turn  courtier,  I  will  peck  my  bread  and 
water  out  of  another  hand."  Which,  take  it  all  in  all,  is 
perhaps  as  defiant  a  claim  for  human  freedom  as  ever 
was  written — and  daintily  put,  withal. 

Very  few  people  have  dared  to  challenge  Horace 
Walpole's  historical  accuracy.  He  wrote  so  many  letters 
that  those  preserved  and  published  fill  seventeen  volumes. 


THE  JVALPOLES  117 

Then,  there  are  six  more  fat  volumes  of  the  history  of 
the  reigns  of  George  II  and  George  III,  besides  his 
Reminiscences.  His  work  on  art  and  his  fiction  and 
belles  lettres  need  not  concern  us  here,  except  as  a  re- 
minder that  this  second  generation  of  Walpoles  had 
wearied  of  the  trickeries  of  political  life  and  retired  into 
more  dignified  pursuits.  They  were  intended  for  a  quiet 
honest  life;  and  the  noise  and  bustle  of  the  Pitts  and  their 
friends  were  for  less  sensitive  minds  and  nerves  than 
Horace  Walpole's.  He  carried  on  his  father's  memo- 
ries, so  quite  naturally  he  could  not  succeed  in  the  new 
politics;  just  as  an  honest  little  shopkeeper  goes  down 
before  the  avalanche  of  the  advertiser  bred  in  the  finan- 
cial slums  of  New  York.  The  Walpoles  were  the  last 
of  an  older  and  more  civilized  world.  The  Pitts  were 
the  tub-thumpers  of  the  new  generation,  where  noise  was 
to  have  more  weight  than  reason  and  statesmanship  was 
to  give  way  to  the  politicians.  The  Pitt  policy  was  burst- 
ing into  full  bloom  by  1761,  and  this  is  how  Horace 
Walpole  describes  the  election  of  that  year:  it  "now 
engrosses  all  conversation  and  all  purses;  for  the  expense 
is  incredible.  West  Indians,  conquerors,  nabobs,  and 
admirals,  attack  every  borough.  ,  .  .  Corruption  now 
stands  upon  its  own  legs — no  money  is  issued  from  the 
Treasury;  there  are  no  parties,  no  pretence  of  grievances, 
and  yet  venality  is  grosser  than  ever.  The  borough  of 
Sudbury  has  gone  as  far  as  to  advertise  for  a  chapman! 
We  have  been  as  victorious  as  the  Roman  and  are  as 
corrupt.  I  don't  know  how  soon  the  Prastorian  militia 
will  set  the  Empire  to  sale."  Then  follows  a  quaint  little 
anecdote  which  will  interest  those  who  concern  them- 
selves with  the  manner  in  which  our  present  ruling  fam- 


ii8    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

ilies  founded  their  fortunes.  "Sir  Nathaniel  Curzon  has 
struck  a  very  novel  stroke,  advertising  that  the  King 
intended  to  make  him  a  peer,  and  therefore  recommend- 
ing his  brother  to  the  county  of  Derby  for  the  same 
independent  principles  with  himself.  He  takes  a  peerage 
to  prove  his  independence,  and  recommends  his  brother 
to  the  Opposition  to  prove  his  gratitude." 

It  is  not  possible  to  understand  Sir  Robert  Walpole, 
the  Prime  Minister,  until  one  has  understood  his  son,  the 
letter  writer.  They  are  part  of  the  same  picture,  and 
one  must  see  the  whole  of  it.  And  charming  Horace 
himself  will  be  more  understandable  when  set  beside  the 
son  whom  Chatham  left  behind.  John  Pitt,  the  second 
earl,  was  a  nuisance  to  his  friends  and  a  danger  to  his 
country.  Being  a  more  insignificant  man  than  his  father, 
he  carried  the  latter's  pompous  manners  still  further: 
it  was  said  that  they  "forbid  approach  and  prohibit  all 
familiarity."  In  short,  he  was  something  very  near  being 
a  starched  fool.  Even  his  own  brother  had  to  remove 
him  from  the  Admiralty;  whereupon  Chatham  began  to 
imagine  that  he  had  military  qualities.  His  conceit  grew 
so  big  that  he  said  he  ought  to  have  been  sent  to  the 
Peninsular  War  instead  of  Wellington;  so  to  comfort 
him  they  allowed  him  to  command  in  the  Walcheren 
expedition;  with  the  result  that  he  made  it  one  of  the 
laughing-stocks  of  English  history. 

Great  Chatham,  with  his  sabre  drawn, 
Stood  waiting  for  Sir  Richard  Strachan; 
Sir  Richard,  longing  to  be  at  'em, 
Stood  waiting  for  the  Earl  of  Chatham. 


THE  JVALPOLES  119 

It  was  the  last  great  deed  the  Pitts  performed  for  Eng- 
land. It  is  not  an  exaggeration — as  the  hastily  misin- 
formed will  think — to  say  that  it  was  fairly  typical  of 
their  family  traditions.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  a 
VValpole  in  such  a  predicament. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  PITT  FAMILY  :  AND  ITS  MYTHS 

IT  was  hastily  assumed,  because  Charles  Darwin  wrote 
up  the  subject  of  Evolution  and  somebody  else  in- 
vented a  motor-bicycle,  that  the  age  of  myths  had 
long  ago  passed.  It  was  understood  that  we  now  con- 
sider only  facts — and  that  romantic  fancies  are  left  to 
the  children  and  the  poets.  Whereas,  on  the  contrary, 
the  last  hundred  years  have  seen  the  birth  of  stranger 
mythical  creations  than  ever  soothed  the  mind  of  an 
inquisitive  Greek,  We  have  written  for  ourselves  a 
history  that  is  packed  with  the  wildest  legends,  the  most 
impossible  tales  of  statesmen — a  history  that  is  full  of 
freaks  of  fancy  and  not  creatures  of  fact.  And  the 
wildest  of  the  wild  romances  of  modern  history  is  the 
great  myth  of  the  Pitts.  Never  did  a  calculating  priest- 
hood play  such  tricks  with  its  congregations  as  when  the 
historians  of  England  dressed  the  Pitts  in  the  robes  of 
patriots  and  decorated  them  with  the  symbols  of  states- 
manship. The  legend  of  the  Pitts  is  one  of  those  amaz- 
ing superstitions  that  have  coiled  round  the  mind  of  man. 
There  were  so  many  advantages  in  the  Greek  myths. 
They  were  generally  beautiful;  and,  somewhat  unex- 
pectedly perhaps,  they  are  now  being  discovered  to  be 
true.  The  excavations  in  Crete  have  turned  the  Mino- 
taur from  a  romance  into  a  history;  the  tales  of  the  early 
Greek  races  are  being  read  as  the  latest  word  of  ethno- 
logical science.      But  the   English  modern   myths   could 

120 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  121 

never  be  claimed  as  beautiful,  and  they  are  turning  out 
to  be  untrue.  Indeed,  they  are  superstitions  rather  than 
myths;  for  the  myth  is  usually  a  true  story  which  uni- 
versity gentlemen  are  too  nervous  to  believe.  But  to 
come  to  the  Pitts.  Ninety-nine  Englishmen  in  every 
hundred,  if  asked  to  describe  them  in  a  few  words,  would 
declare  that  they  were  the  fullest  expression  of  that  virile 
energy  which  has  made  England  supreme;  that  they 
were  the  finest  type  of  business-like  patriotism  and  British 
common  sense.  Such  is  the  Pitt  Myth.  The  Pitts  in 
real  life  were  as  like  this  fancy  picture  as  a  cabbage  is 
like  an  oak  or  a  tadpole  like  a  lion.  A  cabbage  has 
roots  like  an  oak,  and  the  tadpole  has  a  tail  like  a 
lion.  But  Nelson  could  never  have  won  Trafalgar  in 
ships  built  of  cabbages,  while  a  tadpole  has  no  right  to 
the  title  of  king  of  the  beasts.  The  two  famous  Pitts, 
far  from  being  efficient  patriots,  were,  in  the  main,  only 
very  successful  sentimentalists.  But  it  is  not  fair  to  the 
English  people  to  tell  them  the  whole  truth  about  the 
Pitts  in  a  few  callous  sentences.  The  worst  must  be 
broken  more  gently  by  a  calm  statement  of  the  main 
events  of  their  lives;  free  from  the  exaggeration  of  the 
somewhat  emotional  persons  who  have  written  so  much 
of  history.  The  university  don,  being  rather  old-maidish 
in  his  habits,  often  shares  with  his  aunts  a  certain  preju- 
diced outlook  on  life  which  leads  him  into  false  judg- 
ments. The  orthodox  historians  have  spent  much  of 
their  time  in  misjudging  the  Pitts  out  of  all  human 
recognition.  It  will  require  a  great  effort  of  calmer  judg- 
ment to  restore  the  truth;  to  suggest  a  plan  for  exhuming 
these  two  buried  Englishmen,  and  replacing  the  fantastic 
images  that  have  been  raised  above  their  tombs.     They 


122     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

will  not  necessarily  be  pleasant  images,  but  they  will  at 
least  in  some  way  resemble  the  dead. 

The  two  great  Pitts  cannot  be  understood  alone.  They 
must  be  taken  with  the  whole  Pitt  family  of  which  they 
were  so  perfect  an  expression.  The  two  Williams  ful- 
filled the  destiny  of  the  family  tradition,  the  ideals  of 
that  very  rough  Diamond  Pitt  who  founded  the  family 
fortunes  in  India  by  breaking  as  many  of  the  moral  and 
criminal  laws  as  he  found  in  his  path.  His  chief  aim  in 
life  would  appear  to  have  been  the  building  of  a  great 
fortune.  To  that  end  he  found  it  necessary  to  assist  in 
the  building  of  the  British  Empire.  It  would  be  hard 
to  express  more  precisely  the  intentions  of  the  first  Lord 
Chatham — though  to  him,  being  less  practical  than  his 
cleverer  grandfather,  a  fortune  was  represented  by  the 
robes  and  trappings  of  a  peerage  and  high  offices,  rather 
than  by  a  big  banking  account.  Both  the  Williams  lost 
no  opportunity  of  refusing  money,  with  a  blast  of  trum- 
pets which  is  more  generally  associated  with  the  seizure 
of  spoils  rather  than  their  surrender;  though  in  the  long 
run  they  both  somehow  managed  to  accept  quite  con- 
venient pensions  and  perquisites  at  the  public  expense. 
They  knew  to  a  nicety  just  how  far  honesty  is  the  best 
policy — and  the  man  who  measures  that  is  often  some- 
thing of  a  knave. 

But  the  Pitts  must  be  taken  in  chronological  detail. 
It  is  the  sad  story  of  a  family  that  went  from  bad  to 
worse;  that  started  by  stealing  diamonds  in  India,  and 
finished,  in  the  younger  Pitt,  by  almost  stealing  the  honour 
and  safety  of  the  British  people  by  conducting  the  war 
against  the  French  with  the  irresponsible  thoughtlessness 
of  a  second  lieutenant.    Until  they  got  into  bad  company 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  123 

in  India  and  in  London,  and  became  financiers  and  poli- 
ticians, the  Pitts  seem  to  have  been  a  reasonably  honest 
family  in  quiet  Dorset.  They  emerged  from  a  probably 
still  more  honest  obscurity  (for  fame  is  so  often  the 
first-fruits  of  something  shady)  in  the  time  of  Henry 
VIII,  when  Nicholas  Pitt  was  a  modest  landowner.  His 
greatgrandson  appears  to  have  been  less  strict  in  his 
life,  for  he  became  Sir  William  of  Strathfieldsaye;  and  it 
was  not  long  before  his  branch  of  the  family  got  so 
intermingled  in  official  posts  and  political  intrigues  that 
George  Pitt  (i 722-1 803),  a  contemporary  of  the  two 
great  Williams,  found  himself  (without  any  reasonable 
excuse  to  explain  the  position),  as  Baron  Rivers,  in  the 
House  of  Lords.  He  had  been  abroad  as  ambassador, 
and  became  Lord  Lieutenant  of  various  counties  at  home; 
then  rose  to  be  a  Lord  of  the  Bedchamber;  and  when 
he  died  Flaxman  worked  a  mural  tablet  for  his  tomb. 
He  was  a  real  Pitt,  and  an  example  of  how  perfectly 
they  represented  the  ruling  class  of  their  century.  He 
was  very  handsome;  though  Horace  Walpole  candidly 
described  him  as  "brutal  and  half  mad";  while  his  wife 
was  "all  loveliness  within  and  without."  His  brother 
became  a  knight  and  a  general,  and  married  the  daughter 
of  a  viscount;  and  did  all  the  things  then  considered 
correct  form  in  the  governing  set.  He  took  himself 
seriously  in  a  way,  being  a  Pitt;  and  his  "Letters  to  a 
Young  Nobleman  upon  Various  Subjects,  particularly 
on  Government  and  Civil  Liberty  .  .  .  with  Some 
Thoughts  on  the  English  Constitution  and  the  Heads  of 
a  Plan  of  a  Parliamentary  Reform,"  in  its  gorgeous  title 
simply  reeks  of  the  family  sentiments. 

He  is  so  illuminating  on  the  Pitt  tradition  that  it  is 


124    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

hard  to  tear  oneself  away  to  the  other  branch  of  Lord 
Rivers'  kinsmen,  Thomas  Pitt,  the  grandfather  of  the  first 
great  William,  and  the  real  jewel  of  the  family  in  more 
senses  than   one.     Thomas's   father  was   the   rector   of 
Blandford;  and  his  uncle,  William  Pitt,  was  the  mayor 
of  Dorchester.    Thomas  had  restless  ambitions  and  went 
to  sea  in  a  merchantman.     When  he  arrived  in  India  he 
refused  to  return  with  his  ship,  as  bound  by  his  contract, 
and  settled  down  with  the  persistent  intention  of  making 
a  fortune.     The  established  East  India  Company  tried 
to  turn  him  out   as  an  interloper   and  infringer  of  its 
charter;  but  as  Thomas  Pitt  was  not  the  kind  of  man 
who  could  be  turned  out,  it  eventually  came  to  terms  of 
a  sort,   and  allowed  him  to  trade  on  his  own  account, 
and  even  undertake  commissions  for  the  Company.     But 
he  was  soon  accused  of  falsifying  the  invoices  in  his  own 
favour  and  was  dismissed  in  1681.     The  Company,  after 
eight   years'    experience    of    him,    could   only   issue    the 
despairing  appeal:     "Secure  his  person  whatever  it  cost 
the   government,   he  being  a  desperate   fellow  and  one 
that  we  fear  will  not  stick  at  doing  any  mischief  that  lies 
in  his  power."     Indeed,  he  was  so  unscrupulous  a  person 
that  the  Company  a  few  years  later  thought  he  was  just 
the  man  it  wanted  as  Governor  of  Madras;  but  that  was 
not  until  1695,  and  Thomas  had  founded  several  typical 
Pitt  traditions  before  then.     After  being  turned  out  of 
India  in  168 1  he  began  intriguing  with  the  politicians  to 
get  a  charter   for   a  new  rival  India   Company.      Since 
Charles  II  was  in  favour  of  the  Old  Company,  backed 
by  Sir  Josiah  Child,  a  Stuart  man,  Pitt  therefore  became 
a  Whig  man.     He  had  no  philosophical  reasons,  after 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  125 

the  manner  of  Locke  or  Hobbes :  he  was  a  merchant,  not 
a  philosopher. 

PoHtics  to  Thomas  Pitt  was  merely  a  way  of  making 
money  by  manipulating  trade.  It  was  the  very  heart's 
core  of  the  political  theory  of  the  eighteenth  century.  He 
wanted  to  found  a  New  East  India  Company  which  would 
be  his  own,  and  so  push  out  of  the  way  the  Old  Com- 
pany which  belonged  to  his  rivals.  Thomas  Pitt  was 
one  of  the  first  men  who  made  Imperialism  into  a  prac- 
tical business.  He  saw  that  the  House  of  Commons  was 
the  place  for  the  company  promoters  who  were  playing 
for  big  stakes.  An  office  in  the  City  was  good  enough 
for  the  smaller  men;  but  the  big  minds  who  coveted  big 
purses  must  go  to  Westminster.  So  Pitt  went  into  Parlia- 
ment and  became  a  Whig.  Most  of  the  adventurers  be- 
came Whigs,  because  it  was  essentially  the  creed  of  the 
new  men  who  wanted  to  turn  out  the  old — whether  poli- 
ticians. Government  officials,  or  the  established  traders. 
The  Stuarts  had  never  had  much  consideration  or  liking 
for  the  merchants :  for  the  Stuarts,  to  give  them  their  due, 
never  became  modern  enough  to  regard  government  as 
a  trade  by  which  one  could  make  money  more  easily  than 
by  keeping  a  shop.  To  the  politicians  and  the  governing 
set  of  the  Georgian  age  this  was  the  whole  essence  of  the 
game.  The  British  Empire  became  a  great  trading 
company;  strictly  limited  to  the  shareholders  so  far  as 
the  dividends  went,  while  the  national  purse  and  the  na- 
tional blood  paid  all  the  losses  and  found  the  necessary 
capital.  For  the  company  promoter  it  was  an  ideal  State, 
and  Thomas  Pitt  was  one  of  the  happiest  of  the  idealists. 
He  put  his  money  into  one  of  the  greatest  financial  adven- 


126    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

tures  that  the  bankers  and  merchants  have  ever  floated. 
He  became  an  ImperiaHst,  a  pohtician  and  a  Whig:  he 
founded  the  Pitt  family  and  the  Pitt  tradition. 

In  those  days,  in  order  to  become  really  respectable  it 
was  imperative  to  be  a  landlord.  So  Thomas  Pitt  began 
to  invest  the  spoils  of  India  in  English  manors.  An 
estate  near  Salisbury  had  gained  the  necessary  influence 
to  return  him  to  the  Convention  Parliament  of  1689  as 
the  member  for  that  cathedral  town.  It  was  symbolic 
of  the  new  pohtics.  The  medieval  Church  had  given 
place  to  merchant  adventurers.  Pitt  voted  that  the  Stu- 
arts who  had  opposed  his  New  India  Company  should 
be  turned  out  of  office,  and  that  he  and  his  friends — 
and  incidentally  a  man  from  Holland  named  William 
of  Orange,  with  an  English  wife — should  be  put  in  the 
place  of  the  old  Government;  and,  still  more  important, 
in  the  place  of  the  Old  Company.  Everything  happened 
as  he  intended.  When,  in  1691,  the  New  Company 
calmly  started  operations,  no  one  had  the  power  to  sup- 
press it.  Of  course,  the  old  men  had  not  entirely  gone, 
and  there  was  opposition;  Pitt  was  even  refused  a  pass- 
port for  India,  and  summoned  before  the  King  and 
Council.  But  he  merely  shook  himself  when  he  came  out, 
and  it  all  rolled  off,  like  water  off  a  duck's  back.  When 
they  said  no  passport  for  India,  he  said  he  was  only 
going  to  Madeira — and  started  for  India  at  once.  Be- 
fore he  left,  he  had  made  his  position  at  Westminster 
quite  secure  by  buying  the  parliamentary  seat  of  Old 
Sarum,  which  was  ready  for  his  use  when  he  returned  to 
England  in   1695. 

The  career  of  this  great  founder  of  patriotism  and 
British  Imperialism  went  gaily  on.     Already,  in  1678,  he 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  127 

had  linked  himself  to  the  royal  family  of  the  land  which 
he  and  his  descendants  were  so  soon  to  rule  by  marrying 
the  granddaughter  of  James  V.      But  inasmuch  as   his 
rule  of  the  Empire  was  to  be  of  an  unconstitutional  kind, 
and  not  recognized  by  public  statutes,  so  perhaps  it  is 
significant  that  the  granddaughter  should  be  merely  of 
the  illegitimate  royal  line.     Nevertheless,  the  marriage 
was  altogether  typical  of  the  Pitt  adventurers  in  their 
less  pompous  days:  had  William  Pitt  the  Younger  pos- 
sessed a  son  he  might  have  asked  the  hand  of  an  author- 
ized and  hall-marked  princess.     Thomas  got  to  know  his 
wife  through  his   ardent  friendship  with  a   man  whom 
he  met  in  India — Vincent,  "a  notorious  swindler  who  was 
afterwards  convicted  of  serious  crime  and  fled  to  England 
with  Thomas."     Mrs.  Pitt  was  the  niece  of  this  attractive 
creature. 

The  Company  after  many  years  of  struggle  could  stand 
out  no  longer  against  the  daring  deeds  of  this  magnificent 
penny-dreadful  hero;  though  there  must  have  seemed  a 
lingering  hope  of  escaping  from  his  intrigues  when  Pitt 
started  in  1692  the  new  game  of  fitting  out  a  privateer 
ship  to  raid  the  French.     But  it  was  not  to  be,  however 
much  the  schoolboys  of  England  will  regret  this  lost  chap- 
ter when  the  lives  of  the  Pitts  are  issued  (as  surely  they 
will  one  day  be)  in  penny  form  with  the  usual  attractive 
cover.    So,  as  already  said,  the  Company  in  despair  made 
Thomas  President  of  Fort  St.  George,  or  Governor  of 
Madras.     And  a  splendid  servant  he  made:  "he  always 
saw  what  to  do,  and  did  it."     If  he  had  possessed  any 
sense  of  what  was  honest  and  honourable  he  would  have 
been  quite  a  splendid  fellow — but  then  he  would  not  have 
founded  the  British  Empire;  neither  would  he  have  ma^? 


128     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

himself  a  fortune  which  enabled  his  grandchildren  to 
become  the  riders  of  England;  for,  without  that  fortunate 
backing,  in  a  world  where  position  went  by  merits  and 
only  rarely  by  favour,  it  is  quite  probable  that  the  two 
great  Pitts  would  never  have  been  recorded  in  history. 
However,  that  is  anticipating.  Thomas  Pitt,  in  all  prac- 
tical senses  of  the  term,  was  a  far  better  man  than  either 
of  them.  He  was  efficient;  he  could  do  his  job — which 
was  to  make  the  Company  pay  and  prosper.  Of  course, 
being  a  Pitt,  he  put  on  rather  pompous  airs  and  lived  in 
great  style  in  India;  but  then  the  Oriental  imagination, 
being  more  cultured  than  the  imagination  of  the  drab 
West,  likes  style  and  pomp.  But  Thomas  Pitt  never 
forgot  that  he  was  a  merchant;  whereas  his  grandson, 
Chatham,  could  scarcely  ever  remember  that  he  was  a 
statesman,  so  continually  did  he  appear  to  think  that  he 
was  something  much  nearer  the  actor-manager. 

Perhaps  it  would  be  more  precise  to  say  that  Thomas 
never  forgot  that  his  chief  business  was  to  make  money; 
and  if  it  could  be  for  himself  instead  of  for  the  Company, 
that  was  by  no  means  a  serious  fault  in  his  eyes.  In  1701 
he  began  his  greatest  adventure.  One  day  an  English 
skipper  stole  a  diamond  from  a  slave  and  sold  it  to  a 
native  merchant,  who  in  turn  carried  it  to  Pitt,  who 
often  bought  such  gems  when  Governor,  for  they  were  a 
convenient  way  of  remitting  official  moneys  when  banks 
were  not  so  common  as  they  are  now.  But  this  diamond 
was  good  enough  to  keep  for  himself;  indeed,  he  paid 
the  merchant  a  sum  of  over  £20,000  for  it.  It  was  not 
until  17 17  (after  an  alluring  series  of  adventures,  more 
suitable  for  the  truth  of  romance  than  the  solemn  unre- 
alities of  the  history-books)  that  at  last  Thomas  sold  his 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  129 

treasure  to  the  Regent  of  France.  They  say  he  got 
£135,000  for  it.  With  the  proceeds  of  this  stolen  gem 
the  Pitts  established  themselves  in  English  public  life  as 
our  rulers:  they  were  henceforth  in  a  position  to  dictate 
their  terms  to  the  less  fortunate  people  who  had  no  luck. 
Of  course  Thomas  proved  before  the  Council  of  Madras 
that  he  had  not  stolen  it;  and  in  the  eyes  of  the  police 
constable  he  was  perhaps  innocent;  but  in  that  world 
where  they  composed  "Moral  Essays,"  as  Pope  did,  they 
wrote  somewhat  biting  lines  on  the  event.  Not  only  the 
moralists  who  write  verse  had  their  moments  of  cynical 
hesitation;  for  it  appears  that  when  in  1709  the  Company 
had  another  quarrel  with  its  masterful  servant,  a  charge 
of  illicit  diamond-buying  was  one  of  the  accusations  under 
which  he  was  packed  off  to  Europe;  and  it  is  just  a  little 
suspicious  that  Pitt  landed  in  Sweden  instead  of  England, 
and  stayed  there  almost  a  year — as  though  he  thought  he 
might  be  safer  for  a  time  to  be  beyond  reach  of  the  law. 
It  is  one  of  the  chief  difficulties  of  the  governing  class  to 
dodge  those  embarrassing  laws  which  they  are  compelled 
to  make  for  the  restraint  of  the  common  people  who  live 
in  the  world  beneath. 

Back  in  England  in  17 10,  Thomas  Pitt  began  to  count 
the  spoils  he  had  reaped  in  India.  Then  he  translated 
them,  as  occasion  permitted,  into  those  English  manors 
which  were  to  make  the  Pitts  one  of  the  ruling  families 
of  their  race.  When  they  were  all  bought  they  made  a 
picturesque  list,  and  one  feels  that  they  should  go  into 
the  lilt  of  verse  rather  than  cold  prose.  They  were  the 
estates  of  Bosconnoe,  Bradock,  Brannell  and  Treskil- 
lard  in  Cornwall;  Woodyates  and  Stratford-under-the- 
Castle  in  ^Viltshire;  Abbots  Ann  in  Hampshire;  Swallow- 


130    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

field  in  Berkshire;  with  Blandford  St.  Mary  and  Kyn- 
aston  in  Dorset.  They  should  be  set  together,  after  the 
manner  of  "Uncle  Tom  Cobbleigh  and  all";  and,  when 
the  memory  of  the  British  Empire  is  not  so  sweet  in  the 
nostrils  of  patriotic  Englishmen  as  it  may  be  to-day, 
perhaps,  who  knows,  the  names  of  the  Pitt  manors  may 
be  passed  down  in  tradition  as  an  awful  warning  of  how 
an  Empire  was  built  on  blood  and  labour,  in  order  that 
some  few  men  might  make  themselves  lords  by  the  spoils. 

For  that  is  the  sober  truth:  and  these  Pitt  manors 
are  the  root  of  half  the  folly  of  the  eighteenth  and  nine- 
teenth centuries.  Of  course  there  would  have  come  other 
men  to  take  their  place  if  the  two  Pitts  had  not  arrived  on 
the  stage.  But  surely  nobody  else  could  have  been  quite 
such  effective  actor-managers  of  the  alluring  melodrama 
which  caught  the  fancy  of  the  English  crowd.  They  were 
indeed  born  for  the  part  they  played.  They  received 
from  old  Thomas  those  priceless  heirlooms  for  such 
players  in  such  a  play;  he  left  them  outward  pomp  and 
style,  personal  ambition,  an  unscrupulousness  which  had 
made  Thomas's  fortune  in  trade  and  was  to  make  his 
grandchildren's  fortune  in  political  intrigue;  a  most  use- 
ful knack  of  writing  and  speaking  piously,  which  gave  so 
many  more  opportunities  of  acting  impiously;  a  host  of 
family  connections  which  had  dug  their  roots  deep  into 
English  social  life.  All  these  things  descended  to  the  two 
great  Pitts  as  their  heritage  from  Thomas. 

Consider  for  a  moment  the  social  factors  of  this  in- 
heritance. Robert,  his  eldest  son,  married  Harriet  Vil- 
liers,  the  sister  of  the  Earl  of  Grandison,  and  their  son 
was  William,  first  Earl  of  Chatham.  Thomas,  the  sec- 
ond son,  married  the  daughter  of  the  last  Earl  of  Lon- 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  131 

donderry,  and  came  in  for  the  surviving  scraps  of  that 
house  as  the  first  earl  of  a  new  line.     His  history  shows 
all  the  symptoms  of  his  having  been  a  thorough  scoun- 
drel.    John,  the  third  son,  seems  to  have  been  duller  or 
honester  than  his  brothers,   for  he  escaped  a  title  him- 
self, but  married  the  daughter  of  Viscount  Fauconberg; 
but  Lucy,  his  sister,  married  General  Stanhope,  who  nat- 
urally showed  the  respect  due  to  her  family  by  becoming 
an  Earl.   Her  sister,  Essex,  married  a  Cholmondeley,  and 
her  grandson  became  Lord  Delamere.     Of  Robert  Pitt's 
children,  besides  William  of  Chatham,  Thomas  married 
a  daughter  of  the  house  of  Lyttleton,  and  played  his  cards 
so  well  that  his  son  (that  is,  Chatham's  nephew)  became 
Baron  Camelford  of  Bosconnoe.     This  first  Camelford 
was  a  true  son  of  the  Pitts,  seeing  that  he  was  a  flowery 
orator  and  "the  prince  of  all  the  male  beauties."    As  the 
member  for  Old  Sarum  he  had  the  delicate  task  of  mak- 
ing,   in    1782,    a    speech    against   parliamentary    reform, 
which  he  is  said  to  have  accomplished  "without  a  false 
step" !     But  to  his  credit  be  it  recorded  that  next  year 
he  was  on  the  other  side,  and  even  offered  to  sacrifice  his 
family  borough   for  the  national  cause.      Which   shows 
that  he  was  either  reverting  from  the  Pitt  type  or  perhaps 
merely    posing — which    was    also    entirely    after    their 
manner.      When  we   come   to   the   powerful   connections 
that   William  of   Chatham  made   by  his   marriage,   and 
recollect  that  the   elder  branch   of  the   Pitts  of  Strath- 
fieldsaye  were  also  engaged  successfully  in  their  race  to 
the  peerage  (which  George  Pitt  reached  as  Baron  Rivers 
in    1776),   we  shall  then  understand  that  the  breed  of 
Thomas    the    Diamond    King    had    wormed    themselves 
firmly  into  the  solid  oak  of  British  society.     It  so  hap- 


132     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

pened  that  the  two  Williams  succeeded  to  very  little  of 
old  Thomas's  material  wealth:  but  he  left  them  a  net- 
work of  powerful  relations,  and  a  family  tradition  which 
began  as  the  business  of  trading  in  India  and  finished 
(after  the  two  Williams  had  splattered  it  with  rhetoric) 
as  the  Imperial  tradition  of  the  British  Empire. 

It  is  so  easy  to  understand  how  this  theory  of  the 
British  Empire  became  the  gospel  tidings  that  the  Pitts 
brought  to  the  people  of  England.  It  was  clear,  after 
their  example,  that  there  was  no  better  trade  for  am- 
bitious youths  than  saihng  on  merchant  adventures  be- 
yond the  seas.  Thomas  had  gripped  the  secret  of  money- 
making;  he  had  turned  Dick  Whittington  and  his  cat  from 
an  almost  forgotten  romance  to  a  fresh  reality  which 
was  not  sober  fact  but  very  golden  indeed.  We  might 
almost  call  Thomas  Pitt  the  first  great  merchant  prince 
of  modern  England — with  due  apologies  to  Dick  afore- 
said and  Sir  John  Philpot;  to  the  Poles,  who  even  became 
dukes,  and  Sir  Thomas  Gresham :  who  all  were  pioneers 
of  English  commerce.  But  Pitt  stands  out  from  them 
in  that  the  time  was  now  ripe  for  the  greatest  merchant 
prince  to  assert  his  right  to  make  his  grandchildren 
Prime  Ministers  of  their  country — Ministers  who  would 
put  into  theoretical  form  what  their  grandparent  had 
merely  practised  in  everyday  life.  Thomas  had  gone 
into  Parliament,  as  we  have  noted,  and  had  quite  delib- 
erately used  his  power  to  further  his  private  affairs.  It 
all  seemed  quite  frank.  He  had  bought  the  most  notori- 
ously corrupt  borough  in  England — Old  Sarum — surely 
a  sufficiently  obvious  symbol  of  his  intentions  and  utili- 
tarian morals. 

It  was  the  colossal  nature  of  his  success  that  caused 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  133 

a  change  in  the  family  tactics.  Thomas  had  become  so 
rich  that  his  sons  and  grandsons  were  no  longer  merchant 
adventurers  but  county  families:  their  relatives  were  no 
longer  merely  in  the  manors  and  the  City,  but  in  the  peer- 
age. Now,  if  there  was  one  thing  the  Pitts  thoroughly 
valued  it  was  the  worldly  advantages  of  pomp  and  pride. 
To  become  quite  vulgarly  colloquial  for  a  moment,  one 
would  whisper  the  word  "swank"  to  denote  a  very  im- 
portant part  of  the  Pitt  inheritance.  So  when  th^y  be- 
came county  families  they  knew  how  to  live  up  to  the 
part.  As  they  were  no  longer  traders  they  had  to  find 
another  outlet  for  the  ambition  and  self-seeking  of  their 
race.  And  what  more  natural  than  that  they  should  take 
to  the  gentleman's  trade  of  getting  a  Government  post 
and  ruling  their  inferiors?  Their  far-seeing  ancestor  had 
provided  them  with  parliamentary  seats,  of  so  corrupt  a 
nature  that  public  opinion  could  scarcely  reach  the  biggest 
fool  or  the  blackest  knave  who  held  them.  It  was  obvi- 
ous that  the  Pitt  boys  must  go  into  Parliament,  and  rule 
England  for  their  own  good  as  their  grandfather  had 
ruled  India  for  his.  There  was  no  change  of  principle; 
it  was  only  a  change  of  circumstances.  Every  quality 
which  Thomas  had  found  so  useful  in  his  Indian  adven- 
tures was  now  to  make  the  William  Pitts  a  still  bigger 
success  in  London. 

Thomas  Pitt  had  not  worried  his  fellow-citizens  with 
many  public  ideals;  it  was  sufficient  for  him  that  he 
could  make  a  fortune  behind  the  bulwark  of  the  English 
national  reputation,  without  building  on  that  fact  a 
gigantic  political  theory  of  the  British  Empire  and  its 
place  in  the  world.  This  theory  was  the  life-work  of  the 
two  Williams.     They  preached  to  their  countrymen  the 


134    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

somewhat  fantastic  doctrine  that  if  all  England  could  do 
what  their  grandfather  had  done  in  India,  then  English- 
men would  become  the  richest  race  in  the  world,  and 
England  would  become  the  greatest  of  all  the  nations. 
The  doctrine  certainly  seemed  most  plausible — for 
Thomas  Pitt  had  been  very  rich  and  very  powerful;  and  if 
the  multiplication-table  system  were  apphed  to  him  there 
was  really  no  saying  how  big  the  result  might  be.  This, 
indeed,  was  the  very  centre  of  the  Pitt  doctrine  of  the 
British  Empire.  It  might  have  been  issued  as  a  pam- 
phlet: "Hints  to  a  Young  Nation:  How  to  Get  Rich 
Quickly.  By  Those  who  have  Succeeded."  One  can 
imagine  the  whole  idea  being  developed  to-day  by  a  smart 
set  of  American  advertisers.  They  would  turn  the  Brit- 
ish Empire  into  a  company  on  the  latest  principles  of 
centralized  management;  the  Board  of  Education  would 
become  a  sort  of  commercial  college  for  training  its 
clerks  and  typists;  while  the  diplomats  would  become  its 
commercial  travellers.  One  does  not  mean  to  say  that 
such  a  Foreign  Office,  for  example,  would  be  any  more 
harmful  than  the  gentlemen  we  keep  there  to-day.  Even 
a  lot  of  commercial  travellers  would  have  possessed 
enough  wit  to  warn  us  that  the  greatest  European  War 
was  coming  rather  more  than  five  minutes  before  it 
started.     But  that  by  the  way. 

The  main  point  to  emphasize  is  that  the  Pitts'  political 
theory  of  a  British  Empire — the  foundation  of  which  is 
their  main  fame  in  English  history — was  nothing  but 
their  grandfather's  experience  as  an  Indian  trader  trans- 
lated into  the  more  select  language  that  is  considered 
good  form  in  parliamentary  circles.  It  was  making  the 
Pitt  method  the  model  for  the  national  method.     It  was 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  135 

turning  a  merchant's  office  Into  a  national  council  cham- 
ber. Not  having  much  original  brain-power,  and  being 
both  educated  in  the  narrowest  of  schools,  it  was  perhaps 
only  natural  that  the  two  Pitt  Ministers  should  hastily 
conclude  that  a  system  which  had  made  the  fortunes  of 
their  family  must  necessarily  make  the  fortune  of  the 
English  nation.  If  Thomas  had  been  able  to  get  pos- 
session of  stolen  diamonds  sneaked  from  slaves,  why 
should  not  Englishmen  as  a  race  start  laying  their  hands 
on  everything  within  reach?  It  paid  the  Pitts  a  thousand- 
fold.    Why  should  it  not  pay  England? 

Being  men  of  inferior  mental  calibre,  they  were  never 
able  to  analyse  the  economic  position.  They  really 
thought  that  it  had  added  to  the  wealth  of  England 
when  grandfather  Pitt  had  been  able  to  buy  so  many 
manors.  Being  exceedingly  childlike  In  their  thoughts — 
however  roguish  their  actions  and  speeches  may  seem  at 
times — being  so  childlike,  they  probably  failed  to  realize 
that  the  aforesaid  manors  had  been  there  before  Thomas 
bought  them;  he  had  not  added  them  to  the  wealth  of 
England;  and  the  rest  of  Englishmen  were  not  any  the 
wealthier  because  Thomas  collected  their  rents.  As  for 
the  diamond,  the  French  got  that,  for  what  it  was  worth ; 
and,  on  the  capital  Pitt  acquired  by  its  sale.  Englishmen 
had  to  pay  interest  by  their  labours  on  the  Pitt  estates 
and  on  the  Pitt  Investments,  But  the  Pitts  knew  little 
of  the  principles  of  political  economy — an  Ignorance  they 
share  with  most  politicians  to-day.  They  did  not  think 
out  these  facts  in  detail.  They  merely  became  obsessed 
with  a  rhetorical  faith  that  the  Pitt  system  was  good  for 
everybody  everywhere.  The  world  in  their  emotional 
brains   became   a   great   diamond   mine   and   spice   field, 


136    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

where  the  prizes  would  fall  to  the  men  and  nations  that 
were  most  ruthless  and  energetic,  as  their  grandfather 
had  been  in  India.  He  had  cared  little  for  law  or  other 
people's  convenience:  and  the  Pitts  believed  England 
could  be  great  if  it  cared  as  little  for  other  nations  as 
he  had  cared  for  his  trading  rivals. 

We  shall  not  find  much  in  the  career  of  the  two 
Williams  which  is  not  clearer  in  the  life  of  Thomas; 
partly  because  he  was  a  cleverer  man  than  either  of  the 
other  two;  partly  because  he  can  be  judged  by  his  deeds. 
Whereas,  so  much  about  the  two  Williams  is  rhetoric. 
It  is  quite  a  simple  thing  to  judge  one  of  Robert  Wal- 
pole's  frank  speeches:  we  may  not  agree  with  it,  but  at 
least  we  can  treat  it  as  something  solid.  It  is  not  like 
handling  butter  on  a  hot  day  in  July;  it  does  not  leave 
us  with  the  sensation  of  having  the  handle  of  the  spoon 
covered  with  the  treacle — which  is  one's  mental  condition 
after  examining  a  speech  by  the  Pitts,  in  which  there  is 
usually  more  style  than  matter. 

Perhaps  there  was  a  good  reason  for  rhetoric  taking 
the  place  of  facts.  What  the  Pitts  had  to  do  was  to 
persuade  the  people  of  England  that  it  was  to  their  advan- 
tage to  raise  armies,  and  incidentally  be  killed  in  them, 
in  order  that  they  might  win  territories  which  would  give 
fat  posts  to  the  county  gentlemen's  sons  and  fat  dividends 
to  the  City  merchants  when  they  developed  them  for 
trade.  Stated  so  baldly,  it  is  clear  that  it  would  not  have 
been  a  popular  cry.  It  might  have  been  good  enough  to 
win  votes  in  the  Houses  of  Parliament,  because  the  mem- 
bers were  chosen  by  a  very  little  group  of  the  nation — 
although  the  Hanoverian  Houses  were  a  good  deal  more 
independent  than  the  Commons  of  this  present  century. 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  137 

Even  Pitt  could  not  blurt  out  the  whole  truth;  he  had 
to  wrap  It  up  in  pretty  colours.  We  may  even  admit  that 
he  probably  did  not  know  he  was  talking  weak  logic  and 
bad  economics;  for,  it  is  again  necessary  to  insist,  both 
the  Pitts  were  badly  educated  men.  They  were  therefore 
in  the  happy  position  of  being  able  to  talk  rubbish  with- 
out knowing  it,  just  as  a  child  can  swallow  powders  in 
jam.  They  probably  convinced  themselves  by  their  own 
rhetoric,  for  they  were  the  very  embodiments  of  self- 
satisfaction. 

The  position  of  the  Pitts  will  be  seen  to  have  been 
exceedingly  precarious,  if  we  consider  it  for  a  moment. 
The  whole  gist  of  their  political  gospel  was  the  growth 
and  prosperity  of  the  British  Empire  as  a  trading  con- 
cern. Of  course,  the  Earl  of  Chatham,  being  a  very  fine 
gentleman  who  liked  to  imagine  that  he  had  all  the  attri- 
butes of  a  Roman  senator  (being  insufficiently  educated  he 
did  not  know  what  exceedingly  shady  persons  most  of  the 
senators  of  Rome  were),  could  not  crudely  talk  of  trade. 
So  his  pet  hobby  was  spinning  flowing  periods  about  Lib- 
erty and  the  other  abstract  virtues — at  least,  they  have 
generally  remained  abstract  in  political  circles.  Chatham 
was  one  of  those  heroic  persons  who  disdain  to  count  the 
cost — to  others.  When  Clive's  father  came  to  tell  the 
great  War  Minister  how  his  son  knew  a  place  in  India 
where  a  treasure  was  hid,  a  treasure  that  would  pay 
off  the  National  Debt,  Pitt  said  fifty  millions  would  be 
sufficient.  "Lord,  sir,"  said  the  old  man,  "consider,  if 
your  administration  lasts,  the  National  Debt  will  soon 
be  two  hundred  millions."  It  was  a  dainty  stroke  against 
this  reckless  gambler  who  could  not  keep  count  of  his 
losses.     But  perhaps  that  was  why  he  was  adored  by  the 


138    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

City  bankers:  he  gave  them  such  a  splendid  scope  for 
investment  in  gilt-edged  national  debts.  Nevertheless, 
the  very  core  of  the  Pitts'  gospel  for  England  was  eco- 
nomic and  financial.  Now,  if  we  turn  to  that  profoundly 
impartial  book  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography 
(which  is  a  foretaste  of  the  Judgment  Book  itself,  for  the 
solemnity  and  justice  of  its  verdicts),  it  is  a  little  alarm- 
ing to  be  told:  "Chatham  knew  nothing  of  financial  or 
commercial  matters.  He  never  applied  himself  steadily 
to  any  branch  of  knowledge,  and  was  not  even  familiar 
with  the  rules  of  the  House  of  Commons.  He  appears 
to  have  confined  his  reading  to  a  small  number  of  books, 
and  according  to  his  sister,  'knew  nothing  accurately 
except  Spenser's  Fairy  Queen/  "  It  is  startling  to  be  told 
that  the  British  Empire  was  nursed  through  its  long- 
clothes  period  by  a  gentleman  whose  main  qualification 
was  an  accurate  knowledge  of  the  Fairy  Queen.  The 
impossibility  of  the  whole  matter  arouses  one's  deepest 
suspicions — makes  one  suspect  that  things  were  not  what 
they  seemed.  It  is  clear  that  the  Fairy  Queen  is  not  a 
complete  clue  to  the  influence  of  the  Pitts;  we  must  search 
elsewhere. 

The  Pitt  myth  has  it  that  the  father  and  son  were  a 
couple  of  high-souled  patriots  who  inspired  England  by 
the  purity  of  their  devotion  and  saved  her  by  the  match- 
less perfection  of  their  intellects.  If  this  statement  con- 
tains any  truth,  it  is  in  the  proportions  of  one  needle  to 
the  haystack — indeed,  it  is  scarcely  worth  searching  for 
it.  In  sober  fact,  Chatham's  largest  asset  was  a  consum- 
mate power  of  acting — he  could  play  so  perfectly  that 
it  is  his  kindest  and  safest  defence  to  say  that  he  gen- 
erally deceived  himself.     As  for  his  son,  it  is  more  diffi- 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  139 

cult  to  say  what  was  his  greatest  quality — unless  it  be 
that  he  was  sufficiently  great  to  conceal  how  small  he  was. 
His  conduct  of  the  Revolutionary  Wars,  as  we  shall  see, 
was  one  long  tale  of  muddle-headed  mismanagement.  It 
is  possible  that  one  of  these  days,  instead  of  continuing 
to  accept  what  the  orthodox  historians  have  said  about 
the  mythical  Pitts,  the  student  will  consider  a  few  facts  in 
their  careers  and  dismiss  some  of  the  fancies.  When  the 
fancies  are  gone  the  Pitts  will  not  seem  nearly  such 
attractive  figures. 

William  Pitt  the  Elder  only  got  £200  a  year  out  of 
the  family  fortunes,  and  he  was  compelled  to  live  on  his 
wits.  They  would  not  have  carried  him  to  any  great 
fortune,  but  his  old  school-friends  at  Eton,  the  Grenvilles 
and  the  Lyttletons,  soon  turned  out  to  be  as  accomplished 
a  gang  of  office-hunters  and  political  intriguers  as  the 
rather  innocent  Pitt  could  desire.  They  were  the  young 
gentlemen-on-the-make  who  were  to  be  the  accomplices 
of  the  City  merchants  in  this  great  scheme  of  a  British 
Empire  which  was  to  provide  posts  for  the  one  and 
dividends  for  the  other.  They  were  not  even  the  young 
gentlemen  who  did  the  fighting:  they  stayed  safely  at 
home  and  took  the  profits;  for  example,  they  controlled 
the  Admiralty  instead  of  fighting  in  the  ships.  In  short, 
they  were  accomplished  politicians  of  the  smaller  kind. 
They  supported  their  convictions  or  repudiated  them 
exactly  as  they  found  it  convenient  at  the  moment.  They 
have  not  been  accused  of  any  great  political  crimes; 
they  were  rather  amiable  cynics  and  men  of  the  world, 
that  is,  they  got  as  much  of  it  for  themselves  as  they 
could.     They  were  just  the  men  to  run  a  British  Empire. 

The  Grenvilles  persuaded  their  uncle,  Lord  Cobham, 


I40    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

to  give  their  friend  William  a  cornetcy  in  the  Blues — this 
was  his  first  modest  share  in  the  British  Empire.  Then 
he  entered  Parliament  for  the  family  seat  at  Old  Sarum. 
He  had  already  tried  to  get  himself  into  the  public  view 
by  writing  a  "Letter  on  Superstition,  addressed  to  the 
People  of  England."  Note  that  Pitt  had  begun  to  lecture 
the  people  as  if  he  were  already  Prime  Minister  and 
Archbishop  in  one;  which  was  so  like  a  Pitt.  Walpole 
soon  measured  this  group  of  political  adventurers  at  their 
true  value,  and  christened  them  the  "Boy  Patriots"  or 
the  "Cobham  cousinhood."  Later  on  he  flung  in  their 
teeth  exactly  how  he  despised  them:  "A  patriot,  sir! 
Why,  patriots  spring  up  like  mushrooms.  I  could  raise 
fifty  of  them  within  the  four-and-twenty  hours.  I  have 
raised  many  of  them  in  one  night.  It  is  but  refusing  to 
gratify  an  unreasonable  or  insolent  demand,  and  up  starts 
a  patriot.  There  is  not  a  man  amongst  them  whose  par- 
ticular aim  I  am  not  able  to  ascertain,  and  from  what 
motives  they  have  entered  into  the  lists  of  opposition." 
We  must  not  think  they  were  unreasonable  men.  In 
Pitt's  case  there  were  exactly  ten  thousand  reasons  why 
he  should  attack  Walpole  with  the  noisy  yapping  of  a  cur 
attacking  a  St.  Bernard.  For  Sarah,  Duchess  of  Marl- 
borough, had  promised  him  in  her  will  that  number  of 
golden  sovereigns,  and  the  chance  of  a  huge  reversionary 
estate,  if  he  would  help  her  petty  spite  against  the  great 
Minister.  The  servile  Pitt — for  servile  he  was,  for  all 
his  Roman-senator  posturing — changed  his  tone  very 
quickly  after  the  Duchess  was  dead  and  the  money  safe 
in  his  keeping.  Contemporaries  were  under  no  delusions 
as  to  Pitt;  he  was  to  them  a  real  person,  not  a  myth — 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  141 

and  this  real  man  was  expressed  quite  crudely  in  the  po- 
litical squibs  of  the  day.     Here  is  one  of  them : 

When  from  an  old  Woman  by  standing  his  Ground 
He  had  got  tlic  possession  of  ten  thousand  Pound, 
He  said  that  he  cared  not  what  others  might  call  him, 
He  would  show  himself  now  the  true  son  of  Sir  Balaam. 

When  Balaam  was  poor  he  was  full  of  Renown, 
But  now  that  he's  rich  he's  the  jest  of  the  Town ; 
Then  let  all  men  learn  by  his  foul  disgrace 
That  Honesty's  better  by  far  than  a  Place. 

The  title  of  this  embarrassing  production  of  rhymer's 
art  was  "The  Unembarrassed  Countenance."  It  would 
be  impossible  to  sum  up  more  precisely  the  essence  of 
the  elder  Pitt's  public  career.  It  was  his  colossal  impu- 
dence. He  could  contradict  to-day  what  he  had  sworn 
yesterday;  and  to-morrow  declare  that  he  was  right  both 
times.  Mark  Twain  once  wrote  that  man  is  the  only 
animal  that  blushes.  William  Pitt  did  not  come  within 
the  definition;  for  he  never  blushed. 

The  early  history  of  the  elder  Pitt  is  the  story  of  a  man 
who  was  building  himself  a  political  position  with  scarcely 
an  inward  glance  at  his  conscience  or  a  moment's  thought 
for  the  welfare  of  others.  A  mass  of  overheated  emo- 
tions, he  found  very  quickly  that  his  great  asset  was  the 
power  of  flamboyant  speech.  In  other  circles  of  life  he 
would  have  gone  on  the  travelling  stage  of  melodrama. 
With  the  advantage  of  Eton  behind  him  he  could  do 
better  than  a  travelling  company.  He  could  take  part  in 
the   permanent   national   theatre    of   Westminster,    with 


142    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

Lyttleton  and  the  Grenvilles.  The  method  was  well 
recognized:  had  he  not  at  Eton  been  soaked  in  the  Greek 
and  Roman  orators  with  that  very  intention? — just  as  a 
boy  at  the  technical  schools  is  deliberately  taught  wood- 
work or  printing,  so  that  he  may  become  a  carpenter  or 
a  printer.  We  must  give  William  Pitt  and  his  old  school 
all  due  credit;  the  one  was  a  most  excellent  pupil  and 
the  other  a  most  efficient  master.  Pitt  became  the  most 
skilful  actor  that  the  Houses  of  Parliament  have  seen — 
and  they  are  the  houses  of  actors.  Pitt  knew  all  the  tricks 
of  the  trade :  he  could  "make  up"  better  than  anyone  else. 
When  he  knew  he  had  a  poor  case  in  logic,  he  played  to 
the  emotions.  He  would  appear  in  the  PIousc  swathed 
in  bandages,  the  heroic  patriot  who  never  would  forsake 
his  country,  be  his  gout  in  its  last  agony.  Carried  to 
the  door  by  his  servants — one  feels  certain  that  Pitt  had 
got  the  idea  from  an  old  Roman  fresco — he  would  crawl 
to  his  seat  aided  by  his  friends  inside  the  bar.  On  the 
hottest  of  days  he  would  pile  on  the  more  blankets,  if  the 
picture  could  be  improved  thereby.  His  speeches  would 
glance  sideways,  as  it  were,  at  his  grievous  physical  state. 
But  it  will  be  replied  that  he  really  had  gout.  True; 
and  never  did  the  lame  and  blind  beggars  in  the  street 
so  cleverly  turn  their  deformities  into  a  source  of  income. 
But  the  best  of  actors  must  have  some  sort  of  lines 
for  his  tongue :  it  cannot  be  all  gesture  or  sound — though 
the  devotees  of  the  Russian  ballet  may  dispute  the  gen- 
eralization. Perhaps  it  will  suffice  to  say  that  a  great 
actor  must  have  a  passionate  part,  at  least  if  he  be  of  the 
melodramatic  school  of  the  Pitts  and  the  Burkes.  Pitt 
quickly  found  his  particular  passion — which  he  was  so 
soon  to  tear  to  ribbons.     He  took  for  his  theme  just 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  143 

what  we  would  have  expected  the  grandson  of  Thomas, 
the  Diamond  King  and  Indian  merchant  prince,  to  choose. 
He  chose  the  poem  of  the  British  Empire.  In  his  mind 
it  became  that  dream  of  romance  that  her  first  lover  is 
to  the  schoolgirl.  It  was  emotion  painted  with  rainbows 
and  sweetened  with  the  honey  of  hysteria.  The  British 
Empire  became  Pitt's  master  passion:  he  adored  it 
without  reason;  he  would  appear,  if  we  may  judge  by 
his  conduct,  to  have  thought  that  to  reason  of  his  mistress 
was  to  slight  her  honour.  He  ruled  England  by  a  whirl- 
wind of  rhetoric.  It  was  the  method  and  mind  of  the 
gushing  schoolgirl  translated  to  suit  the  habits  of  a 
very  pompous  gentleman  whose  chief  characteristics  were 
ambitious  pride  and  gout.  But  there  is  one  qualification 
that  must  be  made,  lest  any  should  think  this  criticism 
too  harsh.  In  judging  the  career  of  this  man  whom  the 
historians  find  to  be  one  of  the  most  ideal  of  English 
statesmen,  it  is  necessary  to  remember  that,  in  the  medical 
sense,  he  was  not  entirely  sane.  Sir  Andrew  Clark,  a 
great  modern  doctor,  who  considered  his  history  from 
the  professional  point  of  view,  has  given  the  following 
verdict:  "Suppressed  gout  disordered  the  whole  nervous 
system  and  drove  him  into  a  state  of  mental  depression 
varying  with  excitement  and  equivalent  to  insanity."  We 
have  to  face  the  fact  (surely  a  sufficiently  curious  one) 
that  this  historians'  hero  was  half  a  madman.  It  cer- 
tainly is  a  useful  clue  to  Pitt's  political  philosophy;  but 
it  is  strange  that  the  historians  should  have  risked  so 
many  of  their  eggs  in  such  a  frail  basket.  But  that  is 
their  affair  to  explain:  the  worship  of  the  half  insane  will 
scarcely  appeal  to  the  more  scientific  students. 

This  half-madman's  dream  of  a  British  Empire  was  of 


144    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

course  neither  a  romance  nor  a  dream  in  its  origin.  It 
was  the  very  cool  plan  of  a  small  group  of  financiers  and 
merchants  who  desired  the  world,  or  as  much  of  it  as 
possible,  for  their  trading  ground.  Imperialism  is  the 
creed  of  bankers  and  commercial  travellers;  and  the  tools 
of  their  accomplishment  are  the  high-spirited  boys  who 
are  half  educated  at  Eton  and  Harrow.  And  where 
would  one  have  more  hopefully  sought  this  creed  than 
from  the  mouth  of  Pitt?  His  grandfather  had  proved 
that  the  gospel  was  better  than  a  gospel — it  was  a  pay- 
ing proposition.  The  grandson  had  learned  his  part  of 
the  transaction — the  pure  sentiment — at  the  proper 
schools.  He  was  just  the  creature  to  put  the  Imperialist 
case  into  that  attractive  language  which  could  persuade 
the  English  nation  that  what  had  been  good  for  a  Pitt 
was  necessarily  good  for  a  People.  Of  course  the  argu- 
ment would  not  bear  the  weight  of  logic  for  a  moment:  it 
was  economically  impossible  for  every  Imperialist  to 
find  another  Pitt  Diamond,  or  if  they  had  all  found  one, 
then  the  value  would  have  been  somewhere  near  the 
price  of  the  best  coal  instead  of  the  best  jewels.  So 
Imperialism's  only  hope  was  a  screen  of  rhetoric  and 
highfalutin.  Pitt  was  the  supreme  man  for  the  task.  He 
persuaded  his  fellow-countrymen  that  they  must  make  the 
family  fortunes  of  many  more  families,  like  unto  the 
successful  Pitts — then,  by  some  strange  process,  not  fully 
revealed.  Englishmen  would  become  happy  and  great. 
Such  was  the  gospel  of  the  British  Empire:  and  many 
honest  men  have  fought  and  died  for  it.  But  then  many 
honest  men  have  worshipped  false  gods. 

William  Pitt  reached  that  final  triumph  of  the  great 
actor:  he  convinced  himself.     It  would  be  too  grotesque 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  .  145 

to  believe  anything  else.  One  has  moments  of  ungener- 
ous scepticism,  of  tempestuous  doubts  of  Pitt's  sincerity, 
when,  again  and  again,  one  comes  across  cases  where 
the  lowest  self-seeking  seems  the  only  plausible  reason 
for  his  deeds.  When  he  attacked  Walpole,  for  instance, 
because  the  Duchess  of  Marlborough  offered  him  ten 
thousand  pounds.  Is  there  any  definition  of  patriotism 
which  will  cover  that,  and  many  similar  actions,  where 
he  opposed,  when  seeking  office,  exactly  what  he  carried 
into  practice  immediately  office  was  granted  him?  When 
it  suited  his  game  he  denounced  the  subsidies  to  foreign 
States;  when  the  cards  demanded  it,  he  was  ready  to 
double  them.  He  cursed  Walpole,  in  the  manner  of  the 
best  tragedian,  for  being  ready  to  make  terms  with  Spain 
instead  of  crushing  her  by  arms;  yet,  when  Carteret  suc- 
ceeded Walpole,  with  a  fiercer  war  policy,  Pitt  and  his 
friends  began  shrieking  again,  because  Carteret  tried  to 
make  military  use  of  our  alliance  with  Hanover.  Being 
a  sentimentalist,  apparently  Pitt  preferred  to  fight  a  war 
without  allies.  Carteret  was  denounced  as  "an  execrable 
Minister  who  seemed  to  have  drunk  the  potion  described 
in  poetic  fiction  which  made  men  forget  their  country." 
Hanover  was  merely  "a  despicable  electorate."  When 
the  Pelhams  turned  out  Carteret  and  continued  his  policy, 
it  was  Pitt  who  came  to  their  rescue  in  1745;  and  with 
many  bandages  and  threats  of  dying  before  their  eyes, 
told  the  House  of  Commons  that  there  really  had  been 
a  difference  in  policy — though  nobody  could  see  it!  In 
short,  Pitt  used  his  rhetoric  for  any  cause  that  promised 
most  for  his  political  future. 

The  Spanish  War  was  perhaps  the  watershed  between 
the  tolerant  internationalism  of  Walpole  and  the  intoier- 


146    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

able  imperialism  of  Pitt  and  his  school.  It  is  typical  of 
Pitt's  whole  career,  and  may  be  taken  as  a  test  case. 
Walpole,  as  we  have  seen,  was  not  a  pirate  by  nature; 
he  was  a  gentleman;  he  believed  that  England  should 
become  great  and  rich,  but  by  ways  of  reasoning  and 
diplomacy,  without  antagonizing  the  world,  without  wast- 
ing treasures  of  munitions  and  blood.  When  it  was  quite 
possible  that  Walpole  might  have  come  to  some  satis- 
factory compromise  with  Spain,  Pitt  started  shrieking  like 
a  child  that  has  been  frightened  beyond  control.  When 
England's  imperial  place  in  the  world  was  in  debate  Pitt 
was  hysterical — there  is  scarcely  any  other  word  that  will 
meet  the  case.  If  the  name  of  our  great  rivals,  the 
Bourbons,  was  mentioned,  then  Pitt  "saw  red" — there  is 
no  other  phrase.  Now,  a  man  that  "sees  red"  is  alto- 
gether admirable  in  the  front  trenches;  but  is  it  quite 
wise  to  put  him  on  the  general  staff?  Are  our  historians 
well  advised  when  they  classify  Pitt  as  a  great  states- 
man, when  half  his  life  he  was  charging  over  the  fields 
of  political  battle  with  his  eyes  almost  leaving  their 
sockets?  Remember,  that  is  not  an  exaggerated  picture 
of  Pitt's  psychology.  There  were  moments  when  his 
mental  progress  was  appallingly  like  a  mad  dog  racing 
down  the  middle  of  the  road.  In  the  case  of  the  Spanish 
War,  he  was  so  blinded  by  passion  that  he  told  the 
House  that  there  was  no  danger  in  doing  what  we  pleased, 
for  Spain  would  not  fight!  In  other  words,  he  had  not 
the  slightest  conception  of  the  facts;  for  Spain  did  fight. 
The  man  who  was  shrieking  for  war  in  1739  had  been 
yelling  to  reduce  the  army  in  1738 — just  because  it 
seemed  an  opportunity  for  opposing  Walpole.  When 
they  had  driven  Walpole  into  war,  the  "Patriots"  still 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  147 

shrieked;  for  it  was  not  war  they  wanted — it  was  office. 
Pitt  actually  demanded  that  the  instructions  to  the  admi- 
rals should  be  published.  It  is  not  usual  for  a  statesman 
to  call  for  the  publication  of  the  plan  of  campaign.  Even 
a  drummer-boy  would  hesitate  to  do  that. 

The  explanation  of  Pitt  is  partly  his  conceit  that  he 
was  always  right  and  partly  his  want  of  brains.  Being  a 
sentimentalist,  he  built  up  a  little  collection  of  general 
principles — which  were  really  not  principles  at  all,  but 
mainly  rash  generalizations  of  the  ways  of  the  small 
world  that  surrounded  Mr.  Pitt  and  his  friends — whence, 
for  example,  this  creed  of  the  British  Empire.  Then, 
again,  there  were  those  first  principles  for  successful  poli- 
ticians which  the  Whigs  had  used  so  cleverly  to  float  them 
down  the  turbulent  stream  of  the  Revolution  of  1688. 
There  were  all  those  phrases  about  Liberty  of  the  Sub- 
ject, Liberty  of  Parliament,  and  the  rest  of  them,  which 
were  more  pious  than  practical  in  their  effects.  But  what 
was  good  enough  to  put  the  Whig  aristocrats  and  City 
merchants  in  the  seat  of  government  was  in  Pitt's  eyes 
good  enough  to  keep  them  there,  including  himself.  So 
that  sacred  phrase,  Liberty  of  the  People,  is  thick  in  Pitt- 
oratory.  It  burst  forth  in  its  full  glow  during  the  quarrel 
with  the  Americans.  Then  Pitt  tore  the  passion  to  rib- 
bons with  many  a  palatial  gesture;  but  how  much  he  was 
in  earnest  when  he  thundered  for  liberty  for  the  colonists 
may  be  judged  when  we  remember  that  his  last  great 
speech  was  an  equally  tempestuous  cry  that,  fall  the  heav- 
ens, rise  the  earth,  we  must  never  give  the  States  inde- 
pendence: "My  lords.  His  Majesty  succeeded  to  an 
Empire  as  great  in  extent  as  its  reputation  was  unsullied. 
Shall  we  tarnish  the  lustre  of  this  nation  by  an  ignominious 


148    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

surrender  of  its  rights  and  fairest  possessions?"  When 
the  colonists  had  first  thrown  down  the  challenge  to  our 
rule,  Pitt  had  railed  at  the  Government  because  it  would 
not  repeal  the  Stamp  Act,  but  he  added:  "At  the  same 
time  let  the  sovereign  authority  of  this  country  over  the 
Colonies  be  asserted  in  as  strong  terms  as  can  be  devised, 
and  be  made  to  extend  to  every  point  of  legislation  what- 
soever, that  we  may  bind  them  in  their  trade,  confine 
their  manufactures  and  exercise  every  power  whatsoever 
— except  that  of  taking  their  money  out  of  their  pocket 
without  their  own  consent."  Considering  that  such  a 
policy  had  as  much  chance  of  appeasing  the  Americans 
as  throwing  a  chocolate  to  a  man-eating  tiger,  it  is  clear 
that  in  this  great  incident  of  his  career  Pitt  played  the 
part  of  an  innocent  child.  Mr.  Lecky  has  called  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  Pitt,  until  the  last  moment,  seemed 
unaware  that  the  Stamp  Act  was  of  the  slightest  impor- 
tance one  way  or  another:  "There  is  not  the  smallest 
evidence  that  either  Pitt  or  Cumberland  or  any  of  the 
other  statesmen  who  were  concerned  in  the  negotiations 
were  conscious  that  any  serious  question  was  impending 
in  America."  The  normal  historian  who  writes  so  re- 
spectfully of  the  statesmen  of  the  eighteenth  century  does 
not  seem  aware  that  the  greater  number  of  them  were 
such  incompetent  persons  that  they  would  have  brought 
a  coffee-stall  to  bankruptcy.  But  that  is  a  longer  story. 
The  man  who  talked  of  satisfying  the  Americans  by 
fine  phrases  of  abstract  liberty,  and  defied  them  in  the 
next  speech,  was  not  a  statesman.  But  the  same  loose 
romanticism  peeps  out  from  every  thought  of  the  man. 
Burke — no  mean  judge  of  the  sentimental,  surely — tells 
us  of  Chatham:     "The  least  peep  into  the  royal  closet 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  149 

intoxicated  him."  Indeed,  he  was  drunk  with  romantic 
fancies  all  his  life — except  when  he  was  a  sound  realist 
in  pursuit  of  a  good  office  as  quickly  as  he  could  get  it. 
But  even  then  he  played  the  virtuous  knight.  He  wal- 
lowed in  the  luxury  of  the  thought  that  he,  William 
Pitt,  was  unspotted  hy  the  world.  When  the  Boy  Patri- 
ots voted  for  the  subsidies  which  they  had  before  de- 
nounced as  treachery  to  their  country,  Lyttleton  and  the 
Grenvilles  were  too  ashamed  of  themselves  to  go  beyond 
a  silent  vote:  but  Pitt  had  the  calm  conceit  to  imagine 
that  he  could  explain  his  conduct  in  a  speech.  The  con- 
temptuous pamphlets  of  the  day  show  how  he  failed;  but 
it  is  doubtful  if  this  sublime  egotist  really  saw  how  foolish 
he  appeared:  just  as,  dressed  in  the  robes  of  his  new 
earldom,  perhaps  he  never  realized  how  the  City  mer- 
chants were  pointing  with  angry  jeers  at  the  man  who 
had  protested  for  a  generation  that  he  served  his  country 
without  desire  for  honour  or  reward. 

But  Pitt's  personal  character  is  a  little  matter — in  more 
senses  than  one.  W^hat  was  of  infinite  account  was  that 
this  unbalanced  intellect,  this  creature  at  the  sport  of 
every  emotion,  by  the  freak  of  fortune  got  control  of  the 
State  of  Great  Britain,  Empire-building  was  in  part  a 
sport,  in  part  a  fancy  to  him;  sometimes  merely  an  agree- 
able theme  for  the  office-hunter  and  party  politician;  a 
war  or  a  peace  might  easily  hang  on  a  petty  twist  of  his 
thoughts.  Choiseul,  the  French  Prime  Minister,  wrote: 
"What  we  fear  is  that  this  proud  and  ambitious  man, 
having  lost  the  popular  favour,  may  wish  to  recover  from 
his  fall  by  war-like  exploits."  A  fairly  damning  thing, 
surely,  when  the  Prime  Ministers  of  Europe,  writing 
private  instructions   to   their  ambassadors    (as   Choiseul 


I50    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

was  doing  in  this  letter),  should  seriously  estimate  that 
Chatham  might  go  to  war  because  the  City  of  London 
had  pointed  contemptuously  at  his  new  coronet.     Was 
Pitt  so  dull-witted  that  he  did  not  realize  what  war  meant, 
or  who  paid  the  price  of  it?    Did  he  really  not  know  who 
was  getting  the  spoils?     It  was  surely  no  secret.     Lord 
Chesterfield  knew  quite  well  when  he  wrote :    "The  point 
of  profit  is  more  important  than  the  point  of  honour  with 
our  military  dignitaries.     Provided  they  can  avoid  defeat, 
they  are  ready  also  to  avoid  victory,  as  either  event  would 
dpprive  them  of  their  incomes."      Chesterfield  was  not 
writing  vaguely,  he  had  the  courage  to  name  his  man,  for 
he  continued:     "Lord  Loudoun,  a  disgustingly  avaricious 
character,  has  perhaps  thought,  indeed  I  may  say  actually 
did  think,   that  a  victory  would  be  disadvantageous  to 
him,  as  likely  to  put  an  end  both  to  the  war  and  to  his 
enormous  receipts."     That — like  the  Pitt  Diamond — was 
one  of  the  most  direct  results  of  the  Pitts'  wild  adven- 
tures in  building  up  a  British  Empire;  and  if  Chatham 
was  so  simple  as  not  to  know  it,  then  he  seems  to  have 
little  right  to  all  the  carols  that  have  been  rung   (with 
a  few  honourable  exceptions)   from  almost  every  histori- 
cal belfry  in  his  praise. 

Let  the  student  read  again  the  facts  of  Chatham's  life, 
apart  from  the  comments  of  those  whose  business  it  is  to 
pass  historical  judgments;  and  let  him  candidly  ask  him- 
self whether  Pitt  was  really  a  great  man.  That  he  was 
picturesque  is  granted :  but  his  were  the  trappings  of  melo- 
drama rather  than  of  statesmanship.  A  fine  figure  of  a 
man  indeed,  a  man  for  the  pageants  and  ceremonies;  full 
of  all  the  arts  that  show  best  in  the  limelight.     With  our 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  151 

whole  hearts  we  may  exclaim,  "Mais  quel  gestel"  But 
when  we  have  said  that,  is  there  very  much  more  left  to 
be  said  of  the  Earl  of  Chatham?  After  a  century  of 
historical  eulogies  we  have  forgotten  the  thinly  veiled 
contempt  with  which  this  rhetorical  Earl  was  regarded 
by  his  contemporaries  who  knew  him  at  first  hand.  Hor- 
ace Walpole  probably  gives  us  the  true  estimate  when  he 
wrote  on  Chatham's  death:  "Well,  with  all  his  faults. 
Lord  Chatham  will  be  a  capital  historic  figure.  ...  I 
shall  certainly  not  go  to  the  funeral.  I  go  to  no  puppet 
shows.  .  .  .  He  is  already  as  forgotten  as  John  of 
Gaunt.  .  .  .  The  late  appearance  of  enthusiasm  about 
Lord  Chatham  was  nothing  but  a  general  affectation. 
It  was  a  convention  of  hypocrisy  .  .  .  which  did  not  last 
even  until  his  burial." 

If  Chatham  is  a  disappointment,  his  younger  son  is  as 
unsubstantial  as  a  shadow  cast  on  a  sea  mist.  He  is  only 
the  shadow  of  a  shadow.  In  historical  fact  he  was  merely 
the  echo  of  a  dead  voice;  we  can  say  still  more  exactly, 
the  understudy  of  a  great  actor.  The  day  had  come  when 
there  should  have  been  a  brief  notice  at  the  door  of  the 
Westminster  Theatre:  "Owing  to  the  death  of  the  Earl 
of  Chatham,  the  part  of  God  of  England  will  hence- 
forward be  played  by  Mr.  William  Pitt,  junior."  It 
would  be  impossible  for  the  most  precise  of  scientific 
historians  to  get  nearer  to  the  truth  by  any  more  ponder- 
ous explanations  in  terms  of  laws,  or  economics  or  political 
phrases.  The  Pitts  were  not  much  concerned  with  legis- 
lation; of  the  rules  of  economics  even  their  worst  ene- 
mies never  accused  them;  they  could  scarcely  have  written 
a    rational   paragraph    on    the    science    of    government. 


152    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

When  the  elder  Pitt  died,  one  statesman  did  not  give 
place  to  another.  Only  a  great  actor  died  and  was  suc- 
ceeded by  his  understudy. 

Old  Thomas  Pitt  had  possessed  the  best  brains  and 
energy  of  his  family.  Chatham  had  a  large  share  of 
energy,  even  if  he  was  not  blessed  by  the  good  fairies 
with  brains.  But  compared  with  his  younger  son, 
Chatham  was  quite  a  monumental  erection.  He  rushed 
into  war  with  the  chaotic  energy  of  a  bull,  but  he  certainly 
did  know  how  to  use  his  horns.  He  was  a  child  in 
politics,  but  when  it  came  to  planning  a  campaign  that 
required  nerve  and  imagination,  then  the  elder  Pitt  was 
no  fool,  as  his  foreign  enemies  could  best  judge.  But  his 
son,  who  by  some  miraculous  intervention  of  historical 
writers  has  got  the  reputation  of  saving  England  from 
the  French,  was,  in  fact,  one  of  the  most  incompetent 
war  administrators  that  even  this  badly  administered  na- 
tion has  ever  endured.  Mr.  Fortescue,  the  first  in  posi- 
tion of  our  military  historians,  has  summed  up  the  posi- 
tion in  brief  words  which  would  have  annihilated  the 
reputations  of  most  statesmen:  "In  1796  Pitt  had 
squandered  in  his  military  operations  tens  of  thousands  of 
men  and  millions  of  money  to  no  purpose  whatever;  and 
had  acquired,  with  the  exception  of  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope,  nothing  but  pestilential  tropical  islands,  many  of 
them  hopelessly  devastated,  and  all  more  deadly  than  war 
itself  to  the  British  soldiers.  France  was  not  appreciably 
weaker  for  all  his  efforts;  whereas  England  was  left  liter- 
ally without  an  army."  Mr.  Fortescue  continues  that 
Pitt  had  "studiously  neglected  both  the  Navy  and  the 
Army  ...  the  private  soldier  had,  in  fact,  no  alterna- 
tive but  to  starve  or  desert,  for  his  pay  was  too  slight  to 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  153 

keep  him  alive.  This  is  no  exaggeration,  but  the  literal 
truth.  Yet  Pitt  took  no  notice  of  the  matter  whatever. 
.  .  .  Not  till  January  1792  was  a  small  pittance  granted 
to  ameliorate  the  lot  of  the  British  soldier,  and  then  only 
by  direct  intervention  of  the  King.  .  .  .  The  state  of  the 
Navy  was  even  worse."  In  the  case  of  anyone  but  a  Pitt, 
this  might  have  been  ascribed  to  a  cultured  horror  of 
war  and  a  flat  refusal  to  be  responsible  for  it.  But  that 
a  Pitt  should  neglect  the  Army  and  Navy  when  the  family 
believed  in  very  little  else  but  brute  force — that  a  Pitt 
should  leave  the  soldiers  and  sailors  out  of  his  scheme 
was  as  astonishing  and  unnatural  as  if  the  angels  had 
forgotten  virtue  or  the  devils  had  neglected  to  encourage 
vice.     It  was  flying  in  the  face  of  their  destiny. 

The  story  of  the  military  plans  of  the  younger  Pitt 
reads  rather  like  the  marching  of  troops  in  a  comic  opera 
than  the  operations  of  real  war.  He  scattered  his  small 
armies  ail  over  the  world  because  he  had  not  enough 
knowledge  to  discover  where  they  would  be  most  usefully 
concentrated.  When  he  sent  an  expedition  to  Toulon, 
it  was  of  three  thousand  men;  he  might  as  well  have 
sent  three  dozen,  for  he  was  clearly  told  that  fifty  thou- 
sand were  necessary  to  do  the  work.  But  he  had  no 
more  to  send,  for  the  rest  were  spread  in  every  imaginable 
corner  of  the  earth  where  it  was  tolerably  certain  they 
would  be  caught  and  killed  by  fever  before  they  had 
caught  or  killed  their  enemy. 

But  there  is  little  cause  for  surprise  that  Pitt  was 
neither  ready  for  the  war  nor  capable  of  planning  it  if 
he  had  been  prepared.  He  had  been  bred  in  a  world 
of  dreams,  not  the  world  of  reality.  His  education  was 
not  unlike  the  simple  process  of  blowing  up  a  toy  balloon 


154    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

with  gas.  Poor  little  William  had  pumped  into  him  every 
vaporous  sentiment  that  could  be  blended  with  the  art 
and  theory  of  governing  England.  He  was  taught  that 
his  father  had  served  his  country  as  no  one  had  served 
it  so  well  before;  and  the  son  set  out  on  the  same  mis- 
sion with  his  teeth  firmly  set,  as  a  ballet-dancer  comes  on 
to  the  stage  with  a  firmly  set  smile.  He  was  the  son  of 
his  father,  for  he  was  trained  as  the  first  sentimentalist 
in  Europe;  his  mother's  part  in  him  seems  to  have  been 
to  give  him  so  fragile  a  body  that  he  could  not  even  be 
sentimental  with  vigour.  At  the  age  of  eleven  this  is 
how  the  precious  young  hope  of  England  was  writing: 
"The  views  were  enough  enlivened  thereby  to  prevent 
the  drowsy  Morpheus  from  taking  the  opportunity  of 
the  heat  to  diffuse  his  poppies  upon  the  eyes  of  the 
travellers."  A  boy  who  wrote  like  that  was  fairly 
certain  to  grow  up  a  prig  and  a  fool.  And  the  young 
Pitt  fulfilled  every  promise  of  his  youth.  Scarcely  once 
did  he  touch  earth  all  the  time  he  was  governing  England. 
He  was  living  in  the  poppy-world  of  his  boyish  letter. 
In  the  world  of  romance  he  would  make  an  attractive 
figure  in  a  domestic  comedy — the  young  man  who  is  too 
sickly  to  succeed.  When  the  great  war  with  France 
was  on  the  verge  of  eruption,  the  Prime  Minister  of 
England,  from  all  that  can  be  discovered  in  his  papers 
and  despatches,  seems  to  have  been  unconscious  of  its 
imminence.  The  immediate  safety  of  England  turned  on 
the  action  of  Holland;  and  Pitt  seems  to  have  been  un- 
aware that  there  was  a  Dutch  crisis  at  all.  He  was  down 
at  Hollwood  planting  trees  in  his  new  garden.  It 
reminds  us  of  the  days  when  his  father  did  not  realize 
that  there  was  any  chance  of  a  war  with  America. 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  155 

Pitt   has   been   praised  by  some    for   his   liberality   of 
thought  because  he  hesitated  so  long  before  declaring  war 
against  the  new  Government  of  PVance :  it  is  suggested 
that  he  was  a  lover  of  liberty  at  heart,  and  that  it  was  an 
unwilling  fate  that  made  him  interfere  with  the  internal 
affairs  of  a   neighbouring  people.     The   historians   who 
have  built  up  the  picture  of  this  ideal  Pitt  surely  must  see 
that  it  was,  at  the  beginning,  all  to  the  good  of  England — 
in  a  Jingo  sense,  and  England  at  that  time  meant  the  rule 
of    Jingo    politicians    and    manufacturers — that    France 
should  tear  herself  to  pieces,  and  so  be  weaker  in  trade 
and  in   empire.     The  coldest-blooded  of  autocrats   and 
plutocrats  in  England  must  have  been  glad  to  see  the 
beginning  of  the  French  Revolution — for,  being  also  very 
short-sighted  persons,  they  were  unable  to  see  that  begin- 
nings sometimes  have  ends,  and  the  end  might  not  neces- 
sarily be  in  France,  but  on  this  side  of  the  disinfecting 
Channel.     So  Pitt  as  a  kindly  critic  of  France  when  she 
first  burst  into  flames  was  quite  in  keeping  with  the  most 
orthodox  supporter  of  the  British  Constitution  and  the 
British  Empire.     But  when  he  thought  that  the  people  of 
this  country  were  interested   in   the   Revolution,   not  as 
rivals  but  as  sympathetic  friends,  then  he,  who  pretended 
to  be  so  calm  and  dignified,  took  panic,  and  began  to  hit 
out  wildly  on  every  side,  as  a  police  constable  sometimes 
loses  his  head  in  a  crowd.    Pitt  began  to  throw  overboard 
all  his  professed  ideals  of  Civil  Liberty  and  Reform,  as 
a  fine  lady  would  throw  overboard  her  jewels  to  lighten 
a  sinking  boat.     He  rushed  through  a  Traitorous  Corre- 
spondence Bill;  he  suspended  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act; 
he  flooded  the  land  with  spies;  a  Treasonable  Practices 
Act,  a  Seditious  Meetings  Act;  endless  prosecutions  oi 


156    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

supposed  revolutionaries;  such  were  the  signs  of  Pitt's 
terror  and  the  shallowness  of  his  love  of  liberty.  His 
Liberalism  disappeared  into  the  abyss  of  the  Revolution 
as  a  stone  sinks  into  the  sea;  and  it  scarcely  left  even  a 
bubble  or  two  on  the  surface  to  mark  the  place  of  its 
grave.  There  would  have  been  a  reasonable  case  for 
maintaining  that  the  P>ench  Revolution  was  not  the 
friend  of  Democracy,  but  rather  the  tool  of  the  new 
Plutocrats.  But  it  would  be  absurd  to  think  that  the 
leader  of  English  Plutocracy  had  any  such  views  when 
he  eventually  declared  war  on  the  new  spirit  in  France. 
Pitt  was  afraid  of  the  French  Revolution  because  he 
thought  it  really  did  mean  the  beginning  of  Democracy. 
He  had  not  sufficient  knowledge  to  suspect  that  the  Ter- 
ror was  mainly  the  work  of  a  few  self-seeking  adven- 
turers. 

Pitt's  career  was  marked  by  the  tombstones  of  those 
idols  that  it  had  pleased  his  family  to  set  up  for  worship 
in  their  ancestral  temple.  There  was  the  tradition  that 
they  were  the  sworn  opponents  of  corruption  in  Parlia- 
ment. The  younger  Pitt  clung  to  power  by  turning  the 
House  of  Lords  into  a  palace  for  the  bribed.  When  he 
first  took  office  there  were  scarcely  250  peers  in  the 
House:  in  nineteen  years  Pitt  had  added  140  more.  As 
Disraeli  said:  "He  made  peers  of  second-rate  squires 
and  fat  graziers.  He  caught  them  in  the  alleys  of  Lom- 
bard Street  and  clutched  them  from  the  counting-houses 
of  Cornhill."  He  is  said  to  have  spent  one-sixth  of  his 
time  dealing  with  applications  for  offices  and  titles.  He 
gained  a  reputation  for  occasionally  standing  up  to  men 
who  threatened  him  with  revenge  if  he  would  not  grant 
their  requests;  but  the  House  of  Lords,  as  the  home  of 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  157 

modern  Plutocracy,  remains  to  this  day  as  the  best  proof 
of  how  often  Pitt  did  not  resist  these  threats.  The  Pitts 
were  the  founders  of  the  British  Empire;  and  the  rule 
of  the  Rich,  wiiich  was  always  tlie  clear  intention  of  that 
Imperialism,  has  its  monument  in  Pitt's  I  louse  of  Lords. 
The  Pitts  founded  Plutocracy  as  a  vital  political  force. 
Then,  again,  there  was  that  tradition  that  the  Pitts 
were  fearless  in  stating  their  views.  It  is  a  sadly  moth- 
eaten  story,  and  there  never  was  much  in  it.  But  it  had 
been  at  least  a  plausible  tale  in  the  days  of  the  Earl  of 
Chatham;  for  he  thundered  so  loudly  in  the  Houses  of 
Parliament  that  it  really  sounded  as  though  he  were 
defying  Jupiter  and  all  Olympus.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
he  was  usually  not  doing  much  except  tear  his  own  con- 
victions of  last  week,  or  last  month,  into  ribbons — but 
he  made  so  much  noise  that  the  details  of  the  argument 
were  generally  lost  in  the  tumult.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
in  the  case  of  the  younger  Pitt,  nobody  could  say  that 
he  was  ready  to  die  for  his  convictions.  His  life  is  the 
story  of  how  he  ran  away  from  them  whenever  they  were 
put  to  the  practical  test.  Take  the  case  of  Catholic 
Emancipation.  Pitt  had  given  a  pledge,  which  an  hon- 
ourable man  would  have  held  binding,  that  if  the  Irish 
accepted  the  Union,  Catholic  Emancipation  w^ould  im- 
mediately follow.  But  Pitt  weakly  allowed  himself  to  be 
tossed  from  one  position  to  another  until  it  was  too  late 
to  make  any  stand  in  defence  of  his  promise;  and,  finally, 
he  behaved  like  a  coward  by  giving  the  King  a  pledge 
that  he  would  not  raise  the  question  of  emancipation  again 
during  his  reign.  He  certainly  had  the  decency  to  resign : 
but  a  man  of  honour  does  not  pledge  himself  not  to  fulfil 
his  pledges — which  was  what  Pitt  had  done  by  his  promise 


158     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

to  the  King.  Even  if  we  look  at  the  incident  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  Constitution,  is  it  not  somewhat  strange 
that  it  should  be  a  Pitt — one  of  this  family  that  has  got 
into  our  history-books  as  the  builders  of  the  theory  of  par- 
liamentary government — that  it  should  be  one  of  this  race 
that  in  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  should 
surrender  the  hardly  won  rights  of  the  previous  century; 
when  it  was  decided  (one  is  told)  that  it  was  the  Minis- 
ters and  the  Houses  of  Parliament  who  governed 
England,  and  not  an  absolute  monarchy.  For  that, 
surely,  was  what  Pitt  surrendered  by  his  promise  to 
George  III.  Once  more,  this  younger  Pitt  pursued  the 
craven  course  of  running  away  from  his  family  traditions 
as  well  as  his  pledge.  But,  in  truth,  the  traditions  of  the 
Pitts  were  as  imaginary  as  their  promises. 

Ireland  gives  us  another  disillusion  concerning  the 
moral  courage  of  the  younger  Pitt.  The  most  Tory  his- 
torians, the  most  bigoted  Protestants,  have  admitted  that 
the  behaviour  of  English  administrators  and  English 
armies  in  suppressing  the  Irish  rebellions  during  Pitt's 
ministry  was  an  unforgivable  blot  on  the  English  name. 
Let  no  one  imagine  that  it  was  in  keeping  with  the  ethics 
of  the  age,  and  therefore  not  so  horrifying  to  its  con- 
temporaries as  to  ourselves.  On  the  contrary,  it  revolted 
every  decent  man,  soldier  or  civilian,  who  knew  what  was 
happening  in  Ireland.  Sir  John  Moore  wrote  in  1797 
that  he  had  "seen  in  Ireland  the  most  absurd,  as  well  as 
the  most  disgusting  tyranny  that  any  nation  eyer  groaned 
under";  and  he  was  ignored.  When  Ralph  Abercrombie 
arrived  to  command  the  operations,  he  declared  in  a  gen- 
eral order  to  his  men  that:  "The  conduct  of  the  troops 
in  this  kingdom  proved  the   army  to   be   in  a   state   of 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  159 

licentiousness  which  must  render  it  formidable  to  every- 
one but  the  enemy."  Pitt  at  once  took  the  side  of  the 
scoundrels,  and  Abercrombie  was  compelled  to  resign. 
Then  Cornwallis  arrived  as  both  Lord  Lieutenant  and 
Commander-in-Chief,  and  his  verdict  was:  "The  Irish 
Militia  are  totally  without  discipline,  contemptible  before 
the  enemy  when  any  serious  resistance  is  made  to  them, 
but  ferocious  and  cruel  in  the  extreme  when  any  poor 
wretches  with  or  without  arms  come  within  their  power." 
Such  were  the  methods  by  which  Pitt's  Government  was 
ruling  Ireland;  and  one  can  only  ask  whether  Pitt  would 
have  disregarded  so  many  warnings  if  he  had  not  been 
a  great  deal  of  a  coward  and  an  accomplice  in  the  crime. 
It  is  full  time  that  the  whole  vocabulary  of  the  English 
language  is  used  in  the  history-books;  not  merely  a  few 
colourless  words  which  are  supposed  to  maintain  impar- 
tial judgment,  but  which,  in  fact,  so  often  express  a 
series  of  deliberate  lies.  If,  for  example,  we  want  to 
tell  the  truth  about  English  rule  in  Ireland  at  this  time, 
we  can  only  say  quite  frankly  that  it  was  the  rule  of  cads 
and  hooligans — and  if  William  Pitt  was  the  First  Min- 
ister, the  necessary  inference  must  be  drawn.  A  man 
who  wanted  to  govern  justly,  and  had  the  brains  to  carry 
his  wishes  into  action,  would  not  have  needed  so  many 
protests  from  his  officials  before  he  took  action — if  indeed 
Pitt  ever  did  try  to  do  justice  to  Ireland.  He  tricked 
Irishmen,  or  bribed  them  wholesale,  into  a  Union;  and  we 
have  spent  over  a  hundred  years  recovering  from  this 
blind  folly  of  a  man  who  has  been  trumpeted  in  the  his- 
tory-books as  one  of  England's  greatest  statesmen.  If  the 
historians  have  any  right  to  pass  judgment  dead  against 
the  evidence,  then  the  Pitt  Myth  may  be  miscalled  his- 


i6o    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

tory:   measured  against  the   facts,   it  seems  remarkably 
near  a  superstition. 

One  searches  in  vain  for  some  certain  evidence  that  a 
Pitt  was  ever  ready  to  sacrifice  his  prospects  for  the  sake 
of  his  principles;  and  the  longer  one  searches  the  more 
sceptical  one  becomes  whether  he  had  any  principles  worth 
discovering.  He  had  plenty  of  pretty  phrases — but  they 
were  the  regular  stock-in-trade  of  the  Pitt  family.  His- 
tory is  too  often  the  record  of  what  statesmen  have  merely 
said;  what  shall  we  call  the  very  different  record  of  what 
men  have  actually  done?  Pitt  the  Younger  talked  much 
of  reforming  the  Constitution,  but  it  ended — in  talk. 
Think  of  all  the  rhetoric  he  poured  over  the  slave  trade; 
yet  the  fact  remains  that  it  was  not  his  life  but  his  death 
that  seemed  to  clear  the  way  for  that  measure  of  reform 
which  passed  almost  immediately  he  died.  His  friend 
Wilberforce,  who  has  come  down  in  history  as  so  ardent 
a  friend  of  the  oppressed,  turns  out,  on  closer  inspection, 
to  be  not  quite  what  one  expected  from  the  historians' 
eulogies.  When  the  working  classes  lost  their  right  of 
trade-union  defence,  which  was  taken  from  them  by  the 
two  Acts  of  1799  and  1800,  it  was  Pitt  and  Wilberforce 
who  pressed  these  measures  through.  For  once  these 
"reformers"  seem  to  have  been  roused  to  energy;  an 
attack  on  Capitalism  meant  danger  to  the  whole  social 
order  which  these  politicians  knew  to  be  the  basis  of  their 
existence.  "Owing  to  Pitt's  haste  to  pass  a  Bill  for 
repressing  Trade  Unionism,  working  men  had  had  no 
opportunity  of  making  their  views  known  to  Parliament 
before  the  Bill  became  law.  Next  year  Parliament  was 
flooded  with  petitions  of  protest  from  all  parts  of  the 
country,"  is  the  summing  up  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hammond 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  i6i 

in  their  Town  Labourer,  the  most  truthful  book  on  the 
industrial  history  of  this  period. 

But  it  would  be  unreasonable  to  blame  Pitt  for  not 
being  a  social  reformer  of  the  modern  type.  For  he  had 
not  received  any  education  which  allowed  him  to  grasp 
economic  affairs,  whether  on  the  side  of  the  rich  or  the 
poor.  The  extraordinary  exhibition  of  his  intellect  in 
the  matter  of  the  Sinking  Fund  proves  that  we  are  dealing 
with  a  mind  that  was  incapable  of  going  beyond  the  most 
elementary  facts:  we  are  clearly  in  the  presence  of  a  man 
who  had  the  qualities  which  give  high  rank  in  the  world 
of  politicians,  but  would  have  put  him  at  the  bottom  of 
an  average  sixth-form  class.  Pitt  thought  he  had  dis- 
covered (thanks  to  Dr.  Price)  a  method  by  which  the 
National  Debt  could  be  paid  off  by  a  miracle.  He  pro- 
posed to  allot  one  million  pounds  of  taxes  every  year  to 
buying  Consols;  allowing  the  whole  sum  to  accumulate  at 
compound  interest  until  it  reached  £4,000,000  interest  per 
annum.  This,  with  the  £1,000,000  a  year  still  to  be  raised 
by  taxation,  was  to  be  devoted  to  buying  national  bonds 
at  the  rate  of  £5,000,000  a  year,  on  which  interest  would 
lapse,  "the  nominal  capital  being  transferred  to  the  credit 
of  the  Commissioners  until  it  amounted  to  the  same  sum 
as  the  National  Debt."  So  far  the  scheme  was  plausible, 
at  least.  But  the  miracle  began  when  Pitt  apparently 
thought  that  he  could  raise  loans  with  one  hand  to  pay 
them  off  with  the  other;  and  that,  miracle  of  miracles, 
it  was  even  possible  to  pay  off  the  debt  by  raising  new 
loans  at  a  higher  rate  of  interest  than  the  loans  he  was 
paying  off.  It  is  a  little  difficult  to  discuss  such  a  scheme 
patiently.  Perhaps  the  verdict  of  McCulloch,  the  econo- 
mist, may  meet  the  case:     "This  worthless  compound  of 


i62    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

delusion  and  absurdity  ...  we  doubt  if  the  history  of 
the  world  can  furnish  another  instance  of  so  extraordi- 
nary an  infatuation."     It  was  William  Pitt,  the  idol  of 
our  school  histories,  who  gave  this  delusion  and  absurd 
infatuation  to  his  adoring  country  as  his  contribution  to 
the  national  finance.     One  rubs  one's  eyes  in  amazement. 
It  would  seem  that  if  these  Pitts  are  to  survive  in  history 
they  must  be  measured  by  the   standards   of  a   lunatic 
asylum,   and  not  by  the  rules  of  sane  men.     For  Pitt's 
Sinking  Fund  has  none  of  the  elements  of  sanity.     The 
best   excuse   put   forward   for   him   is   that   he   knew   he 
was   talking  nonsense;   that   he   deliberately    fooled   the 
nation  in  the  hope  that  it  would  get,  in  those  critical  days, 
an  illusion  of  national  security  which  the  Pitt  brain  was 
not  capable  of  supplying  in  fact  by  sound  finance.     But 
such  a  theory  means  that  the  Pitts  were  a  race  of  charla- 
tans :  they  should  rank  not  with  the  statesmen,  but  with 
the  great  conjurers  of  the  music-hall  stage.     The  Sinking 
Fund  is  a  landmark  in  the  life  of  Pitt — the  historians 
appearing  to  think  that  it  is  a  symbol  of  his  greatness. 
It  is  indeed  a  symbol,  but  of  his  futility,  not  his  strength. 
It  proclaims  him  as  a  mere  amateur  in  statesmanship — 
for  Pitt  was  the  lazy  lounger  to  his  finger-tips.     It  is  said 
he  rarely  rose  until  midday,  and  he  rarely  did  any  work 
after  he  had  dined.    Perhaps  he  was  wise  in  this  last  reso- 
lution;  for  so  often  after  dinner  he  was  helplessly  intoxi- 
cated.    On  that  memorable  day  in   1793  when  war  was 
declared   between    England    and    France,    William    Pitt 
arrived  at  the  House  of  Commons  drunk.     When  Fox 
was  speaking,  Pitt  was  being  sick  behind  the  Speaker's 
chair.     He  had  seen  no  signs  that  the  greatest  war  in 
the  world  was  beginning;  he  had  naturally  taken  no  steps 


THE  PITT  FAMILY  163 

to  prepare  for  what  he  could  not  see;  a  year  before,  in 
1792,  he  had  reduced  taxation,  which  meant  that  he  was 
preparing  for  peace,  not  for  war.  When  the  war  came, 
Pitt  said  it  would  be  "a  very  short  war,  and  certainly 
ended  in  one  or  two  campaigns."  When  one  remembers 
the  brilliant  skill  and  superhuman  energy  of  Carnot  and 
the  men  who  controlled  the  French  War  Office,  and  com- 
pares them  with  this  amateur  statesman  William  Pitt, 
one  only  wonders  that  he  was  not  right,  and  that  two 
campaigns  did  not  see  us  crushed  out  of  existence.  For- 
tunately, we  were  able  to  survive  until  Pitt  was  dead,  an 
event  which  was  probably  worth  many  new  armies  to  the 
British  nation.  We  had  to  fight  through  these  gravest 
years  under  a  First  Minister  who  mistook  stiff  manners 
for  strength  and  replaced  hard  thinking  by  platitudes. 
Neither  in  his  general  conceptions  nor  in  his  details  did 
Pitt  ever  rise  above  the  level  of  the  commonplace. 
William  the  Younger  was  not  corrupt;  he  did  not  possess 
enough  brains  to  have  kept  himself  afloat  for  a  week  in 
a  life  of  crime,  for  crime  needs  skill  of  a  sort.  He  was 
an  intellectual  nonentity  rather  than  a  knave.  If  he  had 
not  been  his  father's  son,  English  history  would  never 
have  heard  of  him.  He  would  have  been  an  ideal  small 
squire,  and  every  thoughtful  mother  of  daughters  would 
have  held  him  up  as  an  ideal  husband — for  he  looked 
quite  a  gentleman,  even  when  he  was  drunk  every  other 
evening.  We  do  not  yet  realize  that  conceit  and  an 
innate  capacity  for  "bounce" — for  rising  again  after  any 
humiliation  or  mistake — were  the  main  elements  that 
brought  fame  and  fortune  to  the  two  Pitts.  Intellect 
and  moral  character  are  both  negligible  factors  in  their 
careers.     Never    in    history    has    the    popular    estimate 


1 64    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

wandered  so  far  away  from  the  facts  as  when  the  Pitts 
have  been  judged  by  their  rhetoric  rather  than  by  their 
deeds.  It  is  time  to  reconsider  them  as  real  beings — 
not  as  mythological  creations.  One  has  but  attempted 
here  to  suggest  the  outlines  of  their  true  pictures.  With 
such  a  hint,  the  details  may  be  Tilled  in  from  any  history- 
book — and  every  one  of  them  will  disprove  almost 
every  deduction  that  the  orthodox  historians  have  drawn. 
Instead  of  deciding,  with  the  historians,  that  the  two 
Pitts  were  great  statesmen,  one  is  tempted  to  suspect 
more  than  the  mere  link  of  a  name  with  that  charming 
lady  of  Covent  Garden  Theatre,  Ann  Pitt,  their  con- 
temporary. The  critics  concisely  summed  her  up  in  a 
phrase  which  meets  the  case  of  her  namesakes  in  a  quite  re- 
markable fashion;  for  they  said  that  she  possessed  an 
"important  pertness  in  manner  and  a  volubility  of 
tongue."  When  one  thinks  of  Chatham  at  Westminster, 
one  can  draw  all  kinds  of  fantastic  comparisons  with 
"the  best  woman  comedian  in  Covent  Garden."  But  one 
hears  the  historians  shuddering  with  disgust  at  such  a 
low  thought. 


CHAPTER  V 

EDMUND    HURKE 
(1729-I797) 

EDMUND  BURKE  was  almost  a  new  genus  in  the 
political  life  of  England.  He  gained  himself  a 
position  in  public  affairs  because  he  was  capable  of 
thinking  and  writing — both  comparatively  new  ideas  in 
modern  governing  circles.  It  is  true  that  his  thoughts 
were  usually  wrong  and  his  writings  very  misleading  to 
the  public  mind;  but  the  fact  remains  that  this  was  a  new 
method  of  climbing  into  power.  Hitherto,  history  had 
seemed  to  prove  that  statesmanship  depended  on  other 
qualities.  Some  men  had  won  their  way  by  the  sword; 
it  was  one  of  the  most  primitive  methods,  but  even  as 
recently  as  Cromwell  and  Marlborough  it  had  played  a 
supreme  part.  Others  had  been  the  sons  of  dukes  and 
such-like  stately  personages.  Chatham  and  his  kind  had 
been  superb  actors  of  the  melodramatic  school.  Shaftes- 
bury and  the  Restoration  adventurers  had  made  intrigue  a 
fine  art;  they  knew  every  step  on  all  the  back-stairs.  There 
had  even  been  successes  made  by  sheer  brilliancy;  there 
was  Carteret,  who  in  the  matter  of  brains  might  truly 
be  compared  with  the  best  Toledo  steel.  Then  Henry 
Fox  had  founded  a  great  Liberal  family  by  squeezing 
every  farthing  out  of  every  public  office  he  could  lay  his 
hands  on.  While  the  great  Duke  of  Newcastle  had 
ruled  England  for  a  generation  for  no  other  reason  than 

i6s 


1 66    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

that  he  had  so  much  money  and  so  many  parliamentary 
seats  that  nobody  could  outbid  him  or  outvote  him. 
That  all  such  men  had  unusual  intellect  of  a  kind  it 
would  be  stupid  to  deny;  but  it  was  a  mere  auxiliary  to 
their  main  powers. 

Burke  was  in  a  hopeless  position  for  one  ambitious  of 
reaching  the  governing  seat.  He  had  practically  noth- 
ing but  brains  to  offer  his  supporters.  It  was  as  if  he 
had  offered  cowries  in  a  land  used  to  a  gold  coinage.  He 
had  neither  rank  nor  a  sword  nor  the  intriguing  mind. 
He  certainly  had  a  touch  of  Chatham's  melodrama  and 
sentimentality,  and  he  had  something  that  might  be  called 
brilliancy.  But  without  that  rather  heavy  quality  called 
"intellect"  and  that  power  of  plodding  application,  Burke 
would  have  failed.  In  truth,  he  did  not  reach  anything 
of  great  importance;  but  for  the  moment  one  is  com- 
paring him  with  his  political  rivals.  For  it  is  fairest  to 
judge  him  as  a  politician.  There  have  been  many  at- 
tempts to  put  him  amongst  the  philosophers  and  the  men 
who  write  books.  It  is  a  dangerous  line  of  defence 
when  Burke  is  concerned.  After  all,  the  greater  part  of 
his  prime  he  spent  in  politics,  and  his  literature  was 
deliberately  incidental  to  that  career. 

Perhaps  the  legend  of  Burke  the  philosphcr  grew 
around  that  first  serious  book  of  his,  before  he  got  into 
the  political  set.  He  published  The  Origin  of  our  Ideas 
of  the  Sublime  and  the  Beautiful  when  he  was  twenty- 
seven,  and  it  bears  all  the  symptoms  of  a  pure  and  un- 
spotted youth.  It  is  altogether  important  to  examine 
this  book  if  one  desires  to  understand  the  later  Burke; 
for,  as  in  the  case  of  most  men,  he  really  said  nothing 
fundamentally  new  after  his  first  essay — it  is  so  rare  to 


EDMUND  BURKE  167 

think  of  anything  fresh  after  the  age  of  nineteen.  There 
are  two  or  three  sentences  in  this  first  book  that  will  con- 
vict their  author  of  most  of  the  virtues  and  vices  which 
he  afterwards  more  clearly  revealed.  Thus,  in  his  sec- 
tion on  "Terror"  he  wrote:  "No  passion  so  effectually 
robs  the  mind  of  all  its  powers  of  acting  and  reasoning 
as  fear."  His  great  work  on  the  French  Revolution  is 
only  a  somewhat  unnecessary  amplification  and  proof  of 
that  phrase.  He  was  panic-stricken  lest  the  Revolution 
should  spread  to  England  and  involve  himself  and  his 
ruling-class  friends  in  the  downfall  of  their  fellows  in 
France.  He  drove  home  the  same  idea  in  another  sen- 
tence:  "The  passion  caused  by  the  great  and  sublime 
in  nature  ...  is  astonishment;  and  astonishment  is  that 
state  of  the  soul  in  which  all  its  motions  are  suspended 
with  some  degree  of  horror.  In  that  case  the  mind  is  so 
entirely  filled  with  its  object  that  it  cannot  entertain  any 
other,  nor  by  consequence  reason  on  that  object  which 
employs  it.  .  .  .  It  anticipates  our  reasoning,  and 
hurries  us  on  by  an  irresistible  force." 

That  paragraph  might  well  go  on  Burke's  tombstone, 
for  it  tells  us  more  about  the  man  than  anything  else  he 
wrote  or  did.  This  first  book  is  a  careful  study  of  the 
manner  in  which  the  mind  of  man  is  moved:  in  it  we  can 
almost  see  Burke  perfecting  himself  in  the  arts  by  which 
a  politician  or  an  actor  or  an  artist  can  play  on  the  public 
keyboard.  He  tried  to  discover  to  a  nicety  what  would 
affect  the  mind  of  the  mob  or  the  individual.  "To  make 
anything  very  terrible,  obscurity  seems  in  general  to  be 
necessary.  .  .  .  These  despotic  governments  which  are 
founded  on  the  passions  of  men,  keep  their  chief  as  much 
as  may  be  from  the  public  eye.     The  policy  has  been  the 


1 68    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

same  in  many  cases  of  religion.  Almost  all  the  heathen 
temples  were  dark."  That  was  the  corner  of  psychol- 
ogy on  which  Burke  based  his  whole  theory  of  govern- 
ment by  a  detached  superior  governing  class.  When 
he  wrote,  "Magnificence  is  likewise  a  source  of  the  sub- 
lime," he  was  anticipating  the  day  when  the  brilliancy 
of  the  Court  of  Versailles  was  to  dazzle  his  impression- 
able eyes  and  make  the  splendour  of  Marie-Antoinette 
his  pivot  for  the  fate  of  France. 

In  short,  this  essay  on  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful  ex- 
plains why  Burke's  future  political  career  was  that 
strange  mixture  of  realistic  common  sense  and  uncon- 
trolled emotion.  The  master  element  in  his  life  was  the 
persistence  with  which  he  always  allowed  his  intellect  to 
be  overborne  by  his  emotions.  Those  who  are  kind  to 
him  will  say  that  it  proves  that  he  was  a  great  artist. 
While  those  who  are  unkind  will  declare  that  it  es- 
tablishes Burke  as  the  greatest  sentimentalist  among 
statesmen.  As  usual,  the  truth  is  probably  somewhere 
between.  But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  there  is  an- 
other possibility.  When  one  thinks  of  his  early  exami- 
nation of  the  emotions  of  man,  the  thought  arises  that 
perhaps  Burke's  apparent  sentimentalism  was  as  deliber- 
ate as  the  actor's  art.  This  first  essay  is  Burke  in  his 
dressing-room.  His  obvious  capacity  for  close  details 
in  reasoning  continually  shakes  the  argument  that  he  was 
by  nature  as  unbalanced  as  his  wilder  flights  of  emotion 
might  suggest.  Is  it  possible  that  his  florid  language 
was  a  pose,  or  rather  an  art,  to  bend  his  audience  to  his 
will?  Heine  made  even  darker  suggestions:  "Burke 
possessed  only  a  rhetorical  talent  wherein  he  combated, 
in  the  second  part  of  his  life,  the  Liberal  principles  which 


EDMUND  BURKE  169 

he  had  honoured  earlier.  Did  he  intend  by  this  change  of 
opinions  to  f^ain  the  favour  of  the  great?  Did  Sheri- 
dan's Liberal  triumphs  in  the  chapel  of  St.  Stephen's 
determine  him,  out  of  jealousy  and  spite,  to  become 
champion  of  the  past,  of  the  Middle  Ages,  which  af- 
forded a  fertile  field  for  romantic  tirades  and  oratorical 
figures?  Was  he  a  knave  or  a  fool?  I  cannot  tell. 
But  I  think  that  there  is  always  something  suspicious 
when  a  man's  change  of  principles  is  to  the  profit  of  the 
reigning  power." 

But  Burke  can  be  fairly  easily  defended  from  such  a 
gross  charge,  for  it  can  be  shown  that  he  never  possessed 
those  "Liberal  principles."  He  ended  as  he  began: 
a  firm  believer  in  the  privileges  of  the  governing  set  and 
a  humble  worship  under  their  throne.  As  for  the  sug- 
gestion that  Burke  became  a  champion  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  it  exposes  the  tragic  comedy  of  this  statesman's 
career.  Burke's  ideal  was  the  Revolution  of  1688,  and 
it  was  that  event  which  finally  decided  that  the  Middle 
Ages  had  died;  scarcely  one  stone  of  them  was  left  stand- 
ing in  a  hundred  years.  If  the  Stuarts  had  survived  it 
might  have  been  different.  But  Burke's  friends,  the 
Whig  plutocrats,  made  society  "modern";  it  was  Burke's 
pet  Revolution  that  buried  the  mediaeval  traditions  that 
died  with  Charles.  He  probably  thought  that  he  repre- 
sented the  days  of  barons  and  troubadours,  and  hawking 
and  tilting.  But  he  had  only  seen  the  outside  of  that 
system  and  a  few  of  the  most  alluring  of  its  pictures. 
Of  the  real  essence  of  medieval  society  Burke  was  as 
ignorant  as  a  child.  Its  fundamental  note  of  local  and 
democratic  government  was  the  direct  contradiction  of 
Burke's  implicit  faith  and  respect  for  a  governing  class. 


170    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

Besides,  his  whole  nature  was  a  perpetual  clash  with  the 
medieval  mind.  Remember,  he  had  been  educated  in  a 
Quaker  school — not  the  best  of  seed-beds  for  a  mediaeval 
philosophy!  If,  in  spite  of  Burke's  own  phrase,  it  were 
possible  to  Indict  a  whole  age  for  a  psychology,  it  might 
be  said  that  there  was  something  particularly  joyful  and 
a  little  reckless  about  the  Middle  Ages — reckless,  that  is, 
in  the  sense  that  there  was  not  that  continual  self-an- 
alysis which  seems  the  habit  of  more  modern  man. 
There  was  more  living  and  less  thinking  about  it,  less 
weighing  whether  deeds  and  thoughts  were  right  or 
wrong. 

Now,  if  ever  there  were  a  mind  tending  to  introspec- 
tion it  was  Burke's.  He  would  appear  to  have  been  ever- 
lastingly balancing  right  and  wrong,  continually  dreading 
lest  he  was  doing  the  wrong — sometimes  becoming  won- 
derfully ingenious  in  discovering  arguments  why  it  was 
right.  In  any  case  he  was  of  the  morose,  bitter  type, 
and  so  quarrelsome  at  last  that  his  political  contempo- 
raries (a  fairly  tolerant  lot)  could  scarcely  abide  him. 
His  literary  friends  seem  to  have  found  him  more  con- 
genial; and  good  judges  of  men  (being  good  men  them- 
selves) like  Samuel  Johnson  and  Joshua  Reynolds  loved 
him  dearly,  perhaps  because  Burke  was  genial  to  every- 
body who  would  listen  to  his  never-ending  conversation. 
There  we  get  near  the  heart  of  Burke:  he  was  a  talker 
and  a  thinker,  and  he  was,  therefore,  not  in  any  way 
a  man  likely  to  be  attracted  by  a  mediaeval  age  of  action. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  Burke  was  far  less  of  a  mediaevalist 
than  Heine  himself,  because  the  Jew  did  believe  in  lib- 
erty, whereas  the  Irishman  (reversing  the  usual  order) 
did  not;  and  democratic  liberty  was  a  much  more  essen- 


EDMUND  BURKE  171 

tial  part  of  the  Middle  Ages  than  of  those  highly  central- 
ized monarchies  of  Europe  which  Burke  worshipped  on 
bended  knee. 

It  is  a  little  difficult  to  choose  the  best  manner  of 
analysing  Burke.  When  a  man  was  essentially  a  writer 
and  a  talker,  is  it  not  better  to  discuss  his  opinions 
rather  than  his  life?  P'or  is  it  not  fairer  to  attach  more 
importance  to  what  he  said,  rather  than  to  what  he  did? 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  not  much  of  importance 
about  Burke  except  what  he  put  down  on  paper :  and  it 
ought  to  be  judged  on  its  merits.  Whether  he  was  quite 
sincere  when  he  wrote — whether,  that  is,  he  had  deeper 
objects  than  the  ones  he  admitted — is  of  course  an  inter- 
esting question,  but  it  should  not  be  the  main  one.  Had 
he  been  a  successful  politician  his  real  motives  would 
have  revealed  themselves  by  his  deeds — and  it  might 
have  been  imperative  to  weigh  them  against  his  words. 
But  Burke  was  most  unsuccessful  in  active  public  life. 
After  being  the  chief  intellectual  prop  of  the  Whig 
party  for  years,  giving  them  a  doctrine  and  helping  to 
rescue  them  from  all  their  scrapes,  when  the  chance  came 
of  rewarding  him  with  a  Cabinet  office,  his  patrons' 
courage  failed  them,  l^hey  had  discovered  Burke  to  be 
such  a  bad-tempered,  pig-headed  person  that  it  would 
have  made  their  lives  a  misery  to  sit  beside  him  on  any 
committee.  They  were  exceedingly  sorry  to  disappoint 
him,  and  they  gathered  together  round  dinner  tables  to 
sec  whether  they  could  not  risk  admitting  him.  But  al- 
though it  was  largely  owing  to  Burke's  vigour  in  the 
House  of  Commons  that  North  was  compelled  to  resign 
in  178 1,  yet  he  was  not  offered  a  seat  in  the  new  Cabinet, 
and  had  to  be  content  with  the  lucrative,  but  more  insig- 


172     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

nificant,  post  of  Paymaster.  Having  honestly  stuck  to 
his  friends  and  resigned  with  Fox,  he  again  came  in 
with  his  friends  and  regained  the  same  post  in  the  next 
year.  It  was  then  that  he  defended  so  violently  two 
clerks  in  his  department  who  were  accused  of  stealing 
public  moneys.  One  was  convicted,  and  the  other  com- 
mitted suicide:  neither  of  which  events  can  be  taken  as 
evidence  of  innocency.  Common  talk  said  that  one  of 
them,  the  suicide,  had  been  connected  with  the  Burkes 
in  some  heavy  gambling  in  Indian  stock.  Anyhow,  the 
political  Avorld,  not  easily  shocked  by  such  things,  was 
astounded  at  Burke's  behaviour,  seeing  that  it  was  one 
of  his  poses  that  he  represented  all  the  public  and  pri- 
vate virtues.  So  strong  was  the  feeling  that  when  Burke 
rose  to  address  the  House  about  this  time,  some  of  the 
members  left  the  chamber  with  such  manifest  contempt 
that  he  sat  down  without  speaking. 

Another  matter  which  made  his  contemporaries  a  little 
anxious  about  Burke's  company  was  the  uncertainty 
where  he  got  the  money  by  which  he  maintained  himself. 
His  brother  and  his  cousin  were  both  desperate  gamblers, 
and,  so  long  as  they  did  well,  they  appear  to  have  supplied 
Edmund  with  cash.  But  they  soon  crashed;  and  for  the 
last  twenty-five  years  of  his  life  Burke  was  living  far 
above  any  apparent  income  (except  during  his  short 
term  of  office  as  Paymaster).  He  seems  to  have  had 
much  money  given  him  by  his  political  patrons,  all  of 
which  gives  substance  to  Heine's  suspicions,  of  course. 
We  must  not  forget,  also,  that  when  Burke  was  delivering 
speeches  in  favour  of  the  American  Colonies,  he  was 
receiving  seven  hundred  pounds  a  year  as  the  official 
agent  for  New  York.     A  man  must  live,  of  course;  and 


EDMUND  BURKE  173 

Burke  seems  mainly  to  have  lived  by  payments  for  his 
political  services.  It  would  be  hard  to  prove  he  ever 
said  anything  insincere  on  that  account.  His  paymasters 
were  only  wise  in  choosing  a  useful  servant.  Indeed,  he 
had  sufficient  spirit  to  be  exceedingly  self-willed,  and 
sufficient  pride  never  to  press  unduly  tor  any  office  as 
his  reward.  Nevertheless,  he  was  not  quite  the  knight- 
errant  of  Liberty  that  he  has  sometimes  been  painted. 

There  is  one  other  matter,  and  then  his  more  private 
character  can  be  put  on  one  side  for  his  public  writing. 
In  spite  of  the  traditions  of  his  great  speeches,  they  were 
not,  strictly  speaking,  at  all  great  as  rhetoric.  Indeed, 
he  bored  the  House  so  that  he  became  known  as  "the 
dinner-bell" — when  all  members  trooped  home.  Many 
of  his  orations  read  splendidly,  and  there  are  passages 
of  great  power.  But  taken  all  in  all  they  did  not  ring 
true,  so  contemporaries  have  recorded.  One  knows  a 
great  deal  about  Burke  after  reading  Fanny  Burney's 
account  of  the  Warren  Hastings  trial.  Windham  had 
told  her  that  her  prepossessions  in  favour  of  the  prisoner 
would  vanish  when  she  had  heard  Burke;  she  would  then 
hear  "truth,  reason,  justice,  eloquence.  You  will  then  see 
in  other  colours  'that  man.'  "  Miss  Burney  admired  both 
men  so  much,  the  prisoner  and  the  accuser,  that  she  might 
surely  appear  as  an  impartial  witness.  But  in  court  her 
sympathies  turned  definitely  to  the  side  of  Hastings.  She 
had  found  Burke  in  his  speech  at  first  "perfectly  irresisti- 
ble" for  his  charm  of  style.  She  wrote  of  "the  eloquence, 
the  imagination,  the  fire,  the  diversity  of  expression, 
and  the  ready  flow  of  language  with  which  he  seemed 
gifted,  in  a  most  superior  manner,  for  any  and  every  pur- 
pose to  which  rhetoric  could  lead."     Burke's  emotional 


174    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

description  of  "those  dreadful  murders"  almost  swept 
this  clever  young  lady  along  with  the  speaker:  "He  at 
last  overpowered  me;  I  felt  my  cause  lost.  .  .  .  My 
eyes  dreaded  a  single  glance  towards  a  man  so  accused 
as  Mr.  Hastings.  ...  I  had  no  hope  he  could  clear 
himself  nor  another  wish  in  his  favour  remained."  It 
was  but  a  passing  sensation;  for  when  Burke  proceeded, 
and  his  "charges  of  rapacity,  cruelty,  tyranny  were  gen- 
eral and  made  with  all  the  violence  of  personal  detesta- 
tion, and  continued  and  aggravated  without  any  further 
fact  or  illustration;  then  there  appeared  more  of  study 
than  of  truth,  more  of  invective  than  of  justice;  and,  in 
short,  so  little  of  proof  to  so  much  of  passion."  Miss 
Burney  began  to  feel  so  indifferent,  so  unconvinced  by 
this  rhetorical  avalanche,  that  "I  found  myself  a  mere 
spectator  in  a  public  place,  and  looking  all  around  it  with 
my  opera-glass  in  my  hand."  She  was  telling  all  this  to 
Windham;  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  how  that  profes- 
sional politician  (who  was  also  a  gentleman)  took  this 
criticism  of  one  of  his  colleagues:  "His  eyes  sought  the 
ground  on  hearing  this,  and  with  no  other  comment  than 
a  rather  uncomfortable  shrug  of  the  shoulders,  he  ex- 
pressively and  concisely  said,  'I  comprehend  you  per- 
fectly.' " 

The  sum  of  it  all  is  that,  in  this  great  moment  of  his 
public  life,  Burke  did  not  ring  true.  He  made  his  audi- 
ence think  that  it  was  only  another  night  at  the  play, 
when  the  plot  was  so  uninteresting  that  one  had  to  fall 
back  on  the  audience.  And  it  is  clear  that  Windham,  by 
that  "uncomfortable  shrug,"  admitted  the  truth  of  the 
novelist's  keen  analysis.  Of  course,  it  was  mild  to  what 
Miss  Burney  continued  to  say  about  Fox,  another  of  these 


EDMUND  BURKE  175 

gentlemen  who  gave  to  the  House  of  Commons  so  much 
time  that  would  have  been  more  appropriately  spent  be- 
hind the  footlights.  But  for  the  moment  we  are  consider- 
ing Burke.  This  criticism  of  the  great  speech  at  the 
Hastings  trial  was  not  an  isolated  example.  The  House 
of  Commons  only  tittered  when  he  flung  on  its  floor  the 
famous  dagger  that  was  meant  to  sum  up  all  the  horrors 
with  which  the  FVench  Revolution  threatened  England. 
Burke  most  obviously  did  not  ring  true.  Take  this  case 
of  Warren  Hastings,  and  indeed  the  whole  case  concern- 
ing India.  Burke  devoted  seven  years  to  the  prosecution; 
and  after  all  that  torrent  of  passion  and  eloquence — by 
reason  of  it,  shall  we  say — the  impeached  man  was  ac- 
quitted on  all  the  charges.  It  was  a  piteous  failure  for 
such  a  gigantic  effort.  Lord  Teignmouth,  who  knew 
more  about  Indian  affairs  than  most  people,  could  only 
explain  Burke's  conduct  during  the  trial  by  advancing 
the  theory  that  he  was  not  sane.  But  there  was  probably 
a  genuine  belief  in  Burke's  mind  that  things  happened 
under  British  control  in  India  that  ought  not  to  happen. 
He  was  right,  and  the  trial  was  a  sharp  reminder  to 
hesitating  adventurers  that  they  must  consider  the  honour 
of  their  race  when  they  went  fortune-seeking  in  foreign 
lands.  But  that  Burke  should  have  fixed  on  Hastings 
as  a  fit  example,  and  that  he  should  have  turned  a  court 
of  justice  into  a  theatre  and  a  politicians'  bear-pit,  is 
suflicient  proof  that  he  was  not  the  man  predestined  to 
represent  the  national  honour.     He  did  not  ring  true. 

It  had  been  the  same,  a  few  years  before,  when  Burke 
was  the  imposing  figure  in  the  demand  for  the  India  Bill 
of  1783.  He  practically  drafted  the  Bill,  and  was  its 
chief  supporter  in  the  Commons.     He  did  everything  that 


176    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

rhetoric  could  do :  but  Lord  Morley,  In  his  Life  of  Burke, 
can  only  sum  up :  "The  whole  design  was  a  masterpiece 
of  hardihood,  miscalculation  and  mismanagement."  It 
was  so  typical  of  Burke's  inconsistencies  that,  at  this  time 
when  he  was  rattling  the  beams  of  Westminster  Hall  by 
his  denunciations  of  corruption  in  India,  he  had  just  been 
trying  to  protect  those  two  criminal  clerks  in  his  own 
public  office  in  London.  Further,  one  did  not  have  to  be 
very  much  of  a  cynic  to  hesitate  to  give  the  government 
of  India — as  this  Bill  proposed — into  the  hands  of  the 
ruling  politicians.  For  at  this  moment  these  gentlemen 
were  the  allies  of  North  and  Fox,  a  combination  which 
had  made  even  the  tarnished  minds  of  Westminster  be- 
gin to  consider  whether  political  compromise  might  not 
have  a  boundary  to  its  indecencies.  For  Burke  at  this 
moment  to  ask  Parliament  to  commit  into  such  hands  the 
government  of  India — which  was  not  very  far  from  the 
request — was  as  if  the  chief  of  highway  robbers  had 
begged  to  be  made  Governor  of  the  Bank  of  England 
on  his  word  of  honour  that  he  would  live  as  a  reformed 
man.  Burke's  word  would  always  have  been  acceptable; 
but  there  would  have  been  a  continual  dread  lest  this 
overstrung  rhetorician  and  uncertain  parliamentarian 
might  commit  some  more  of  those  continual  blunders  of 
taste  and  of  fact  that  he  was  so  ready  to  commit  at  home. 
To  quote  Lord  Morley  again:  "Indian  promotion  would 
have  followed  parliamentary  and  party  interest."  The 
man  who  proposed  to  give  India  as  a  perquisite  to  the 
politicians  of  that  age  had  none  of  the  qualities  of  a 
philosopher,  and  very  few  of  the  signs  of  an  honest  man, 
the  cynic  might  add. 

However,  everything  about  Burke  is  of  secondary  im- 


EDMUND  BURKE  177 

portance  compared  with  his  relations  to  the  French  Revo- 
lution, which   almost  entirely  filled  the  last  eight  years 
of  his  life.     In  1790  he  was  sixty-one  years  of  age,  and, 
after  all  his  efforts,  he  had  probably  never  been  so  un- 
popular.     He  had  made  a   fool  of  himself  during  the 
Regency   debates   of    1788,    when   the   Whigs    hoped   to 
break  Pitt's  power  at  last.     It  was  all  wasted  time,  for 
the  King  became  sane  again;  but  Burke's  hysterical  speech 
would  have  gone  far  to  ruin  the  Whigs'  chances  in  any 
case.    As  Windham  wrote:    "He  is  folly  personified,  but 
shaking  his  cap   and  bells  under  the  laurels  of  genius. 
He  finished  his  wild  speech  in  a  manner  next  to  madness. 
.   .   .   Half  the  kingdom  considered  him  little  better  than 
a  madman."     Most  people  would  have  said  that  Burke, 
for  good  or  evil,  had  finished  his  work  in  the  world.     In 
fact,  he  had  scarcely  begun  it,  if  we  measure  by  effect, 
and  not  by  time  and  effort.     The  Revolution  gave  Burke 
his  chance,  as  it  were.    He  was  born  to  be  leading  counsel 
in  a  sensational  criminal  case — that  was  his  clear  destiny. 
He  had  tried  his  hand  on  Hastings,  but  after  a  few  years 
of  him  the  prosecution's  case  was  looking  less  promising. 
Burke  was  now  to  have  another  and  a  far  greater  chance. 
This  time  he  was  to  try — not  a  single  man — but  a  nation; 
and  the  appeal  was  to  be,  not  to  the  court  in  Westminster 
Hall,  but  to  the  judgment  seat  of  the  World.     Even  the 
emotional  Burke  should  have  been  satisfied  at  last.     Here 
was  a  passion  that  he  could  tear  into  innumerable  tatters. 
And  he  did. 

He  published  Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France 
in  November  1790.  It  was  his  estimate  of  the  acts  of 
the  first  twelve  months  of  the  great  upheaval,  which  may 
be  dated  from  the  storming  of  the  Bastille,  July  14,  1789. 


178     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

It  was  a  matured  estimate,  for  he  had  written  and  rewrit- 
ten it  continually  during  the  whole  year.  The  theme — or 
rather  the  indictment — was  continued  until  his  death; 
and  during  that  period  Burke  was  not  much  less  than  a 
monomaniac.  It  was  all  to  his  credit  that  he  took  it  so 
seriously,  for  until  Burke  wrote  not  many  had  realized 
its  importance.  The  great  Pitt  scarcely  seemed  to  regard 
it  as  practical  politics.  He  thought  it  so  insignificant  that 
he  began  to  plan  a  war  in  the  East  against  Russia.  Those 
Englishmen  who  were  watching  events  were  mostly  gen- 
erous enough  to  hope  that  the  French  would  succeed  in 
ridding  themselves  of  a  hopelessly  indolent  and  inefficient 
government;  and  they  had  a  less  conscious  hope  that 
perhaps  the  example  might  help  in  ridding  England  of 
some  of  its  ruling  corruption  and  stupidity  also. 

But  before  anyone  could  quite  determine  what  would 
happen,  or  what  should  be  done,  Burke  began  to  rush 
wildly  about  shouting  "Fire !  fire !"  at  the  top  of  his  voice. 
He  refused  to  support  Fox's  Bill  to  repeal  the  Test  and 
Corporation  Acts,  seeming  to  imagine  that  this  was  the 
first  step  toward  the  fall  of  the  Tower  of  London.  The 
general  opinion  was  that  he  was  making  himself  absurd. 
But  the  publication  of  the  Re/lections  changed  the  public 
mind  to  the  extent  that  the  propertied  classes  took  panic. 
It  was  not  only  in  England;  throughout  Europe  Burke's 
book  went  like  a  torch  of  summons  to  the  war  against 
France.  It  is  even  a  question  whether,  had  it  not  been 
for  this  book,  France  might  not  have  settled  her  troubles 
before  Europe  intervened.  It  was  the  threat  of  foreign 
invasion  that  gave  the  political  adventurers  of  France 
their  excuse  for  the  Terror,  and  all  that  followed  it.     If 


EDMUND  BURKE  179 

Burke  was  the  cause  of  the  coaHtion  against  France,  then 
he  caused  the  Terror  also. 

Was  Burke  right  or  wrong  in  his  conception  of  the 
French  Revolution?  It  is  fair  to  describe  his  attempt  to 
crush  it  as  the  chief  endeavour  of  his  famous  career. 
Did  that  attempt  prove  him  to  be  a  wise  man  or  a  foolish 
one,  or  merely  one  of  those  ordinary  middling  men  who 
are  half  right  and  half  wrong,  who  have  (being  only 
middling)  certainly  no  title  to  great  fame,  whether  for 
wisdom  or  folly?  In  a  hundred  smaller  points  of  detail 
Burke  was  quite  right  concerning  the  affairs  of  France. 
On  the  final  question,  that  summed  all  these  up  into  a 
great  whole,  as  the  most  sensational  event  in  history, 
Burke  was  utterly  and  profoundly  wrong.  His  argu- 
ments would  have  seemed  conclusive  in  a  police  court. 
He  could  have  easily  secured  convictions  or  committals 
against  thousands  of  these  revolutionaries — for  assault, 
incitement  to  riot,  murder,  sacrilege,  blasphemy,  and 
most  of  the  offences  contained  in  the  criminal  code. 
Tested  by  the  standards  of  the  law-courts  of  Europe, 
Burke  had  a  reasonable  case  for  his  amiable  hope  that 
the  French  Revolution  would  be  hanged,  drawn  and 
quartered.  No  one  must  blame  Burke  for  using  heated 
language  when  he  wrote  on  this  subject;  for  no  one  should 
think  that  this  earthquake  of  a  great  nation  can  be  dis- 
cussed and  valued  in  the  quiet  language  current  between 
bishops  and  their  butlers. 

But,  tested  by  the  standards  of  philosophy  and  meas- 
ured by  the  rods  of  universal  history,  Burke's  criticism 
of  the  Revolution  was  little  but  the  ravings  of  a  sick  man 
in  delirium.     His  argument  had  the  intellectual  content 


i8o    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

of  a  street  brawl.  His  treatment  of  the  great  event 
showed  that  he  never  saw  it  as  a  whole,  and  further, 
had  he  seen  that  whole,  it  is  clear  that  his  historical 
knowledge  was  too  slight  in  texture  to  give  his  criticism 
any  value.  Sentence  after  sentence  in  his  Reflections  on 
the  Revolution  in  France,  and  also  in  his  later  writings, 
can  be  isolated  as  gems  of  wisdom  in  detail;  but  all 
gathered  together  it  is  evident  that  here  if  ever  was  a 
case  of  a  man  who  could  not  see  the  wood  because  of 
the  trees.  When  he  said  in  1790  that  if  the  Revolution 
continued  as  it  had  begun  it  would  soon  be  in  the  hands 
of  a  scum  of  self-seeking  adventurers,  he  was  not  so  far 
from  the  truth.  His  words  are  one  of  the  great  prophe- 
cies of  history:  "If  this  monster  of  a  Constitution  can 
continue,  France  will  be  wholly  governed  by  the  agitators 
in  corporations,  by  societies  in  the  towns  formed  of 
directors  of  assignats,  and  trustees  for  the  sale  of  Church 
lands,  attorneys,  agents,  money-jobbers,  speculators  and 
adventurers,  composing  an  ignoble  oligarchy,  founded 
on  the  destruction  of  the  Crown,  the  Church,  the  nobility 
and  the  people.  Here  end  all  the  deceitful  dreams  and 
visions  of  the  equality  and  rights  of  men.  In  the  'Serbo- 
nian  bog'  of  this  base  oligarchy  they  are  all  absorbed, 
sunk  and  lost  forever."     The  prophecy  became  a  fact. 

It  is  useless  denying  that  the  greater  part  of  the  men 
and  women  who  led  the  French  Revolution — as  in  the 
case  of  most  revolutions — were  distinctly  objectionable 
people  with  whom  one  would  not  have  cared  to  share 
one's  dinner  table.  Some  of  them  were  more  or  less 
mad,  some  were  dishonest  self-seekers,  some  thoroughly 
vicious,  and  the  rest  of  them  were  entirely  sincere  or 
still  more  entirely  stupid.     Of  course  Burke  was  right 


EDMUND  BURKE  i8i 

when  he  maintained  that  it  is  impossible  to  proceed  by 
way  of  violent  change.  As  he  wrote  to  Elliot  in  1795: 
"I  wished  to  warn  the  people  against  the  greatest  of  all 
evils — a  blind  and  furious  spirit  of  innovation  under  the 
name  of  reform";  hut  when  he  added  as  the  next  sen- 
tence, "I  was  indeed  well  aware  that  power  rarely  re- 
forms itself,"  he  clearly  did  not  see  whither  this  latter 
remark  would  lead  him;  for  it  cut  the  ground  from  under 
so  much  of  his  criticism  of  the  revolutionaries.  It  is 
indeed  impossible  to  reform  a  nation  by  standing  it  on  its 
head,  as  those  sincerely  stupid  people  tried  to  do  in 
France.  Burke  made  legitimate  fun  of  that  vain  hope 
that  it  would  save  France  if  it  were  cut  up  into  artificial 
departments  with  new  communes  and  new  cantons — "this 
new  pavement  of  square  within  square,  and  this  organiza- 
tion, and  semiorganization,  made  on  the  system  of  Em- 
pedocles  and  Buffon,  and  not  upon  any  politic  principle." 
This  critic  was  right  when  he  protested  that  society  is  a 
living  organization  and  cannot  be  played  with  at  the  re- 
former's will.  We  realize  now  better  than  in  Burke's 
time  that  the  units  of  the  body  social  cannot  be  shuffled 
and  dealt  around  as  a  card-player  deals  his  pack;  and 
all  honour  to  Burke  for  grasping  that  vital  fact  so  soon. 
Again,  Burke  had  a  sound  argument  in  his  mind  when 
he  asked  whether  a  community  of  "lazy"  monks  was  the 
worst  thing  that  could  happen  to  society,  even  if  they 
only  sang  all  day  in  their  choir.  F^or,  said  he,  "they  are 
as  usefully  employed  as  if  they  worked  from  dawn  to 
dark  in  the  innumerable  servile,  degrading,  unseemly, 
unmanly,  and  often  most  unwholesome  and  pestiferous 
occupations,  to  which  by  the  social  economy  so  many 
poor  wretches  are  inevitably  doomed.     If  it  were  not  so 


1 82    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

generally  pernicious  to  disturb  the  natural  course  of 
things  ...  I  should  be  infinitely  more  inclined  forcibly 
to  rescue  them  from  their  miserable  industry,  than  vio- 
lently to  disturb  the  tranquil  repose  of  monastic  quie- 
tude." Of  course,  Burke  had  too  deep  a  respect  for 
property  to  write  thus  of  labour  in  real  seriousness;  and 
his  desire  to  save  the  French  Church  was  based  on  his 
conviction  that  if  the  Church  and  religion  broke  down, 
then  his  beloved  property  would  be  submerged  in  the 
deluge  that  would  flow  through  the  breach  in  the  social 
ramparts.  Still,  as  a  point  against  the  blind  stupidity  of 
the  French  revolutionists  it  was  a  neat  debating  score. 

So,  in  one  small  point  after  another,  and,  as  we  have 
seen,  even  in  important  matters,  Burke  had  good  grounds 
for  his  case  against  the  Revolution.  But  when  his  argu- 
ments are  set  out  in  their  proper  proportion  against  the 
background  of  the  whole  social  and  political  condition  of 
France,  then  his  case  becomes  little  more  than  the  size 
of  the  fly  on  the  wheel.  He  was  held  by  his  contempo- 
raries, and  is  still  considered  in  the  history-books,  as  a 
man  with  a  philosophical,  a  political  and  historical  mind. 
He  clearly  himself  believed  that  he  had  all  these  qualities. 
It  is  the  more  astounding,  therefore,  to  find  him  as  hope- 
lessly dazed  by  this  great  convulsion  in  France  as  a  coun- 
try cousin  is  confused  by  the  number  of  platforms  at 
Waterloo  Station.  He  so  completely  lost  his  head  that 
he  mistook  the  opinions  and  acts  of  a  few  dozen  men  and 
women  in  Paris  for  the  thoughts  and  deeds  of  the  French 
nation.  "The  Revolutionary  harpies  of  France,"  he 
shrieked,  "sprung  from  night  and  hell,  or  from  that  cha- 
otic anarchy  which  generates  equivocally  'all  monstrous, 
all  prodigious  things,'  cuckoo-like,  adulterously  lay  their 


EDMUND  BURKE  183 

eggs  .  .  .  leave  nothing  unrent,  unrifled,  iinravaged,  or 
unpolluted  with  the  slime  of  their  filthy  otifal."  This 
panic-stricken  Irishman,  who  was  reputed,  and  believed 
himself,  to  be  a  philosopher,  turned  out  to  be  so  dull- 
witted  and  badly  informed  that  he  mistook  a  clique  of 
adventurers  and  army  contractors  for  the  French  race. 

Burke  never  realized  that  the  French  were  the  most 
cultured  people  in  Europe,  lie  had  himself  been  re- 
ceived as  an  honoured  guest  in  the  salons  of  Paris,  but 
It  is  clear  that  this  visitor  from  duller  London,  bred  as 
he  had  been  in  a  Quaker  school,  was  altogether  ill  at  ease 
in  a  society  that  recklessly  and  charmingly  dared  to  dis- 
cuss whatever  subject  came  within  its  view.  The  sight 
and  sound  of  a  governing  class  with  brilliant  wit  and  fine 
manners  rasped  on  his  prim  soul,  and  he  went  back  to 
England  to  declare:  "I  see  some  of  the  props  of  good 
government  already  begin  to  fail."  The  whole  incident 
goes  to  prove  that  France  then,  as  now,  stood  at  the 
highest  point  of  world  culture.  Was  Burke,  then,  such  a 
hopeless  ignoramus  that  he  could  measure  this  nation 
by  the  deeds  of  a  few  cut-throats  and  fanatics  in  Paris? 
Frankly,  Burke  was  of  such  a  nervously  emotional  nature 
that  he  was  capable  of  even  that.  Take  the  case  of  his 
passing  glance  at  Marie-Antoinette  when  he  went  to  Ver- 
sailles during  his  visit  of  1773.  It  is  possible  that  he 
might  have  altogether  changed  his  opinion  of  the  FVench 
Revolution  had  it  not  been  for  the  memory  of  that  lady's 
face.  It  would  be  unkind  to  quote  once  more  that  famous 
paragraph  in  the  Reflections  where  he  recalls  his  emo- 
tions at  that  sight.  This  mature  statesman  and  writer 
has  the  calm  assurance  to  tell  his  readers  that  the  history 
of  France  should  be  decided  by  the  appeal  of  that  pretty 


1 84    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

face.  "I  thought  ten  thousand  swords  must  have  leapt 
from  their  scabbards  to  avenge  even  a  look  that  threat- 
ened her  with  insult.     But  the  age  of  chivalry  is  gone." 

That  is  Burke  all  over.  When  he  should  have  been 
discussing  the  social  conditions  of  France,  he  was  dream- 
ing of  a  pretty  woman,  "glittering  like  the  morning  star, 
full  of  life  and  splendour  and  joy.  Oh,  what  a  revolu- 
tion! and  what  a  heart  must  I  ha--:  ^j  contemplate  with- 
out emotion  that  elevation  and  that  fall!"  Remember, 
he  was  deadly  in  earnest,  for  it  happened  that  this  passage 
formed  part  of  some  proof-sheets  that  he  sent  to  Sir 
Philip  Francis  for  his  approval;  and  Burke  was  indignant 
when  his  friend  promptly  replied  that  all  this  about  the 
French  Queen  was  "pure  foppery."  Burke's  answer  was 
that  he  wept  when  he  wrote  the  passage,  and  wept  again 
when  he  reread  it.  It  is  true  that  there  may  be  few 
things  so  worth  weeping  for  as  a  pretty  face;  but  one 
must  really  distinguish  between  melodrama  and  sociology. 
Had  this  lady  been  the  most  virtuous,  the  most  beautiful 
and  the  wisest  in  France,  she  would  have  weighed  not  a 
grain  in  a  philosopher's  estimate  of  the  national  problem. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  Marie-Antoinette  was  very  far  from 
any  of  these  qualities,  and  if  anything  could  excuse  the 
crimes  of  the  revolutionists  it  was  her  folly  and  treachery. 
She  was  almost  the  weakest  spot  in  the  Royalists'  case — 
and  Burke  thought  she  was  one  of  its  strongest  points  of 
defence. 

Burke's  ignorance  of  the  facts  in  this  matter  of  the 
Queen  is  only  one  instance  of  his  ignorance  of  the  French 
position  altogether.  Lord  Morley  writes  tersely:  "The 
fact  is  that  Burke  did  not  know  enough  of  the  subject 
about  which   he  was  writing."     We   might  forgive   his 


EDMUND  BURKE  185 

ignorance  of  facts,  but  for  a  man  who  professed  to  be  a 
bundle  of  tender  sympathies  it  is  impossible  to  overlook, 
his  want  of  imagination  when  he  was  faced  by  the  agony 
of  France.  He  had  not  enough  historical  knowledge  to 
know  how  France  had  been  driven  desperate  by  the  crush- 
ing of  its  local  liberties  under  the  crude  centralization  of 
Richelieu  and  his  successors,  and  by  the  reckless  extrava- 
gance of  the  Court  of  the  Bourbon  Kings.  Had  they 
been  a  poor-spirited  race — like  the  Germans  or  the  Eng- 
lish, for  example — the  French  would  have  borne  with 
tyranny  meekly.  But  they  rose  in  anger  at  last,  not  be- 
cause they  were  the  most  downtrodden,  but  just  because 
they  were  one  of  the  freest  people  in  Europe.  A  few 
bad  harvests  brought  the  crisis,  and  the  criminal  folly 
of  the  PVench  Court  and  Its  Ministers  did  the  rest.  Ir- 
resistibly France  was  swept  away  by  a  wave  of  bold  self- 
assertion.  If  Burke  had  been  a  man  of  wide  culture,  in- 
stead of  little  more  than  a  politician's  hack-writer,  he 
would  have  understood  the  courage  and  righteousness  of 
that  national  assertion.  At  its  heart  France  was  sound. 
But  it  is  a  dangerous  thing  to  play  with  the  laws  of  so- 
ciety, just  as  Browning  has  said  it  Is  "a  dangerous  thing 
to  play  with  souls."  It  quite  naturally  happened,  there- 
fore, that  unhappy  France,  setting  out  to  reform  itself, 
found  suddenly  that  events  had  got  beyond  control. 
Someone  had  blundered,  or  somebody  was  self-seeking. 
Anyhow,  sane  possible  reforms  became  Insane  or  Impos- 
sible anarchy,  and  the  most  brutal  became  more  powerful 
than  the  wise. 

There  was  France  writhing  In  the  agony  of  child-bed; 
she  was  about  to  give  birth  to  a  new  epoch.  Never  had 
conception  been  more  legitimate,  for  the  democracy  of 


1 86    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

the  most  democratic  race  in  Europe  and  the  sensibilities 
of  the  most  refined  one  had  been  grossly  insulted  by  a 
callously  stupid  government.  It  was  indeed  time  that 
France  asserted  itself.  But  the  task  proved  beyond  its 
powers  for  the  moment,  and  the  torture  of  this  great  peo- 
ple was  piteous.  At  such  a  moment  a  statesman  would 
have  offered  constructive  advice;  a  philosopher  would 
have  shown  broad  toleration;  and  a  man  of  feeling  would 
have  rushed  with  sympathy.  Burke  professed  to  be  all 
these.  Yet  at  this  supreme  crisis  in  history  he  can  think 
of  nothing  more  helpful  than  to  stand  outside  the  sick- 
room, raving  in  a  manner  more  like  the  lady  next  door 
in  hysterics  than  a  philosopher.  He  tried  to  incite  the 
world  to  rush  in  and  slaughter  the  patient.  The  mere 
rumour,  in  later  days,  that  Pitt  was  thinking  of  making 
peace  with  the  Republic  sent  Burke  into  convulsions.  One 
Letter  on  a  Regicide  Peace  followed  another;  and  they 
ceased  only  because  Burke  died.  He  left  the  world  with 
bitter  sorrow  that  the  people  of  France  had  not  been 
dragged  through  the  mud  by  the  Kings  of  Europe,  be- 
cause here  was  a  nation  that  had  vainly  attempted  to  save 
itself  from  the  gross  misgovernment  of  an  utterly  incom- 
petent Court  and  its  bureaucrats. 

Even  on  his  own  lines  Burke  could  have  stated  such  a 
clear  case  against  the  revolutionary  government.  The 
men  in  possession  of  power  were,  many  of  them,  self- 
seeking  adventurers — history  is  one  continual  proof  that 
it  generally  has  been  so — but  there  were  as  many  wise 
and  honourable  men  in  France  as  anywhere  in  the  world. 
Burke  was  one  of  the  last  men  who  should  have  needed  a 
hint  on  this  matter,  for  had  he  not  written,  "In  truth,  the 
tribe  of  vulgar  politicians  are  the  lowest  of  our  species"? 


EDMUND  BURKE  187 

These  tyrants  (if  such  they  were)  in  Paris  were  exercising 
their  tyranny  over  their  own  people.  Indeed,  Burke 
seemed  to  admit  it  when  he  wrote  :  "The  world  knows  that 
in  France  there  is  no  public,  that  the  country  is  composed 
hut  of  two  descriptions — audacious  tyrants  and  trembling 
slaves."  To  call  this  people  servile  is  a  ridiculous  per- 
version of  the  truth,  but,  accepting  his  statement,  could  he 
have  more  clearly  shown  how  worthy  this  helpless  nation 
was  of  sympathy?  If  he  had  possessed  the  slightest 
knowledge  of  current  affairs  he  would  have  known  that  it 
was  the  threat  of  the  Kings  and  the  emigres  (Burke's 
dear  friends  and  masters)  that  turned  the  young  revolu- 
tionary Republic  into  an  aggressive  force.  France  de- 
cided to  conquer  Europe  because  she  realized  that 
Europe  intended  to  conquer  her.  Of  course,  there  were 
all  those  adventurers  in  Paris  who  egged  on  the  tumult  of 
war,  because  times  of  chaos  and  war  are  most  convenient 
for  those  who  are  out  for  plunder.  Had  it  not  been  for 
the  emigres  sheltering  beyond  the  Rhine,  and  the  Kings 
who  made  very  clear  their  intention  of  making  what 
territorial  profit  they  could  out  of  the  troubles  in  France, 
then  there  would  have  been  little  chance  for  those  political 
adventurers  to  turn  a  legitimate  attempt  to  win  freedom 
into  a  wild  scramble  for  power.  It  was  the  policy  of  such 
as  Burke  that  made  the  Terror  possible.  It  was  his 
favourite  actress,  Marie-Antoinette,  who  drove  the 
people  mad  with  the  fear  of  her  treachery  and  revenge. 
It  was  she  who  called  the  Kings  of  Europe  to  crush  France 
by  force  of  arms.  It  was  her  folly  that  set  up  the  guil- 
lotine; and  if  ever  justice  demanded  a  head,  it  was  fitting 
that  hers  should  fall. 

Burke  had  lost  control  of  his  intellect.     France,  to  him, 


i88    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

meant  a  few  score  intriguers  in  Paris;  he  could  not  see 
the  nation  behind  them — or,  shall  we  say,  under  them. 
That  was  only  one  side  of  his  monumental  blunder.  Had 
he  called  on  Europe  to  crush  a  nation  because  it  gave  sub- 
mission to  tyrants,  it  would  have  been  stupid,  it  would 
have  been  heartlessly  severe.  Nevertheless,  there  would 
have  been  some  rude  sense  of  justice  in  it.  But  Burke  had 
another  object  in  view,  and  it  was  the  full  measure  of  this 
man.  He  began  his  wrath  against  the  people  of  France 
when  there  was  scarce  a  murmur  of  desire  on  their  part  to 
overthrow  the  monarchy,  still  less  any  suggestion  of  per- 
sonal punishment.  There  had  certainly  been  in  limited 
parts  of  France  the  burning  of  chateaux;  there  had  been 
many  bread  riots;  and  the  Bastille  had  been  rushed  by  a 
mob  that  had  many  suspicious  symptoms  of  being  organ- 
ized by  those  adventurers  who  were  already  seeking  their 
opportunity.  But  we  must  assume  that  Burke  was  well  in- 
formed in  public  affairs;  he  surely  had  never  mistaken  the 
Gordon  Riots  for  the  voice  of  England?  Did  he  imagine 
that  France,  or  any  other  country,  was,  in  those  wilder 
days,  to  reform  herself  without  temporary  confusion? 
The  question  may  make  us  realize  the  fundamental  con- 
viction of  Burke's  character.  He  was  so  satisfied  with 
the  social  order  as  it  already  was  that  he  could  not  con- 
ceive of  any  radical  change  being  necessary. 

That  is  the  political  and  economic  mind  of  Edmund 
Burke.  He  stood  for  the  established  order.  He  was 
the  most  powerful  and  most  subtle  of  the  defenders  of 
the  men  in  possession.  He  was  the  advocate  of  the 
Ruling  Class:  the  chief  protector  of  their  property. 
Thus  it  was  that  immediately  the  French  Revolution  be- 
gan Burke  was  its  opponent:  because  it  dared  to  ask  for 


EDMUND  BURKE  189 

change,  and  began  to  take  for  Itself  what  had  been  re- 
fused to  its  petition.  Burke  was  the  most  convinced 
Tory  in  English  history.  7'here  are  a  few  sentences 
scattered  here  and  there  through  his  writings  that  seem 
to  scent  liberality  of  thought  and  welcoming  of  reform. 
But  when  analysed  they  all  come  to  very  little  on  paper; 
and  when  it  came  to  practice,  Burke's  own  official  and 
political  career  Is  a  proof  that  they  meant  even  less. 
Whatever  reform  Burke  was  prepared  to  sanction.  It 
must  not  Interfere  with  the  supreme  power  of  the  prop- 
ertied and  governing  class.  This  man,  who  has 
strangely  become  known  In  the  schoolbooks  as  a  Liberal 
(in  the  sense  of  generous  thought),  will  be  found  on  in- 
spection to  have  performed  much  the  same  function  for 
the  rich  that  a  stone  castle  did  for  the  Norman  barons. 
It  saved  their  existence.  It  does  not  appear  that  he 
concealed  this  fact  either  from  himself  or  from  the 
world.  When  he  first  wrote  on  the  Revolution  It  was 
chiefly  In  the  orthodox  political  phrases — the  rights  of 
kings  and  senates,  the  franchise  and  the  constitution  In 
general.  But  he  soon  realized  what  was  really  at  stake. 
In  his  letter  to  Sir  Hercules  Langrishe,  In  1792,  he  wrote 
"the  great  danger  of  our  time,  that  of  setting  up  number 
against  property."  Again:  "It  is  one  of  the  excellences 
of  our  Constitution  that  all  our  rights  of  provincial 
election  regard  rather  property  than  person."  But  It 
was  in  his  letter  of  defence  against  the  attacks  of  the 
Duke  of  Bedford  (on  the  matter  of  Burke's  pension) 
that  he  showed  so  frankly  his  hand.  He  admitted  there 
that  he  knew  perfectly  well  the  essential  effect  of  his 
arguments  against  the  revolutionists  in  France.  For  he 
told  the  Duke  that  "there  Is  one  merit  of  mine  which  he, 


190    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

of  all  men  living,  ought  to  be  the  last  to  call  in  question. 
I  have  supported  with  very  great  zeal  .  .  .  those  opinions 
which  buoy  up  the  ponderous  mass  of  his  nobility,  wealth 
and  titles.  ...  I  have  done  all  I  could  to  discountenance 
their  inquiries  into  the  fortunes  of  those  who  hold  large 
portions  of  wealth  without  any  apparent  merit  of  their 
own."  Could  anything  be  franker?  But  evasion  was 
impossible;  for  Burke  had  been  driven  by  the  tumult  of 
France  to  show  his  hand  when  perhaps  quieter  times 
would  have  permitted  him  to  play  his  cards  in  the  craftier 
manner  of  the  ordinary  politician. 

At  all  costs  Burke  was  intent  on  saving  the  Rich  and 
the  Governing  Classes  from  attack;  and  if  he  had  not 
been  such  an  innocent  child  he  would  not  have  been  so 
stupid  as  to  give  himself  away  for  the  sake  of  scoring  a 
few  clever  points  off  the  Duke  of  Bedford.  This  letter 
is  a  very  good  example  of  Burke's  weakness  and  strength. 
It  shows  the  qualities  that  made  this  third-rate  man  one 
of  the  celebrities  of  Europe.  It  is  a  brilliant  letter.  It 
certainly  caused  great  fun  at  all  the  smart  breakfast  tables. 
The  Duke  had  suggested  that  Burke  had  no  right  to  a 
State  pension  in  his  old  age;  and  the  answer  was  as  neat 
an  example  of  the  "look  at  your  own  dirty  face"  argument 
as  a  philosopher  could  be  expected  to  produce.  Indeed, 
it  is  quite  delicious.  He  contrasts  his  own  services  to  the 
State — which  had  certainly  been  prodigious  in  amount  if 
not  so  monumental  in  quality — with  the  services  of  the 
Duke.  Then  he  gives  a  short  sketch  of  the  manner  in 
which  that  peer's  family  came  into  power,  built  on  the 
spoils  of  the  Church  at  the  Reformation :  "The  grants 
to  the  House  of  Russell  were  so  enormous  as  not  only  to 
outrage  economy,  but  to  stagger  credibility.     The  Duke 


EDMUND  BURKE  191 

of  Bedford  is  the  leviathan  among  all  the  creatures  of 
the  Crown.  He  tumbles  about  his  unwieldy  bulk;  he 
plays  and  frolics  in  the  ocean  of  the  royal  bounty.  Huge 
as  he  is,  and  whilst  'he  lies  floating  many  a  rood,'  he  is 
still  a  creature.  His  ribs,  his  fins,  his  whalebone,  his 
blubber,  the  very  spiracles  through  which  he  spouts  a 
torrent  of  brine  against  his  origin,  and  covers  me  all 
over  with  the  spray — everything  of  him  and  about  him 
is  from  the  throne.  Is  it  for  him  to  question  the  dispensa- 
tion of  the  royal  favour?"  One  can  see  in  a  flash  this 
gigantic  creature  tumbling  clumsily  in  a  prehistoric  marsh. 
It  is  a  classic  of  vituperation. 

But  observe  the  extreme  danger  of  the  whole  argument. 
The  more  conclusively  Burke  proved  that  Bedford  did 
not  deserve  his  possessions,  the  more  preposterous  was 
the  plea  that  Burke  had  done  his  best  to  save  this  national 
plunderer  from  the  avenging  revolutionists  who  were 
then  rising  with  intent  of  rough  and  ready  justice.  It 
was  only  a  frank  contempt  for  public  sense  that  could 
have  allowed  the  writer  to  set  up  such  a  perilous  defence, 
which  could  be  so  easily  outflanked;  and  one  scarcely 
knows  whether  to  admire  more  the  insolence  of  the  bluff 
or  the  dainty  skill  with  which  it  is  carried  through.  "My 
merits,  whatever  they  are,  are  original  and  personal; 
his  are  derivative.  It  is  his  ancestor,  the  original  pen- 
sioner, that  has  laid  up  this  inexhaustible  fund  of  merit, 
which  makes  His  Grace  so  very  delicate  and  exceptious 
about  the  merit  of  all  other  grantees  of  the  Crown. 
Had  he  permitted  me  to  remain  in  quiet,  I  should  have 
said,  'Tis  his  estate;  that's  enough.  It  is  his  by  law; 
what  have  I  to  do  with  it  or  its  history?  He  would 
naturally  have  said  on  his  side,  'Tis  this  man's  fortune, 


192     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

He  Is  as  good  now  as  my  ancestor  was  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  ago.  I  am  a  young  man  with  very  old 
pensions;  he  is  an  old  man  with  very  young  pensions — 
that's  all." 

It  Is  all  very  excellent — on  the  lines  of  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  squabbling  (in  the  old  days!)  with  the  peers 
about  their  Church  lands.  But  does  It  help  to  settle 
whether  either  Burke  or  Bedford  had  much  claim  to  his 
pension?  There  Is  the  suggestion,  indeed,  that  if  only 
the  Duke  had  held  his  tongue,  then  Burke  would  have 
held  his  pen;  for  did  not  the  angry  politician  add:  "In 
the  name  of  common  sense,  why  should  the  Duke  of 
Bedford  think  that  none  but  the  House  of  Russell  are 
entitled  to  the  favour  of  the  Crown?"  Which  is  very 
true,  but  it  is  an  answer  which  would  naturally  receive 
more  attention  in  Billingsgate  than  in  more  scholastic 
circles.  It  was,  nevertheless,  just  the  smart  answer  which 
made  Burke's  pen  so  useful  to  the  political  magnates  in 
whose  service  he  spent  most  of  his  life.  He  devoted  his 
earlier  public  years  to  playing  the  part  of  general  secre- 
tary and  friendly  adviser  to  the  Whigs.  He  told  them 
what  to  think;  and  then  he  put  it  into  good  English 
for  them.  In  case  they  got  muddled  in  their  grammar 
and  logic.  There  Is  really  no  knowing  what  might  have 
happened  to  the  bewildered  Whig  noblemen  and  country 
gentlemen  in  those  days  if  it  had  not  been  for  Burke's 
fatherly  care.  They  might  have  forgotten  all  about  the 
Revolution  of  1688,  with  Its  magnificent  principles  on 
which  the  whole  safety  of  the  nobility  and  plutocracy  de- 
pended. Without  Burke  to  keep  them  straight  in  the 
path  of  self-interest,  they  might  have  become  reactionary 
and  gone  back  to  the  healthier  traditions  of  national  life, 


EDMUND  BURKE  193 

when  the  welfare  of  the  State  was  held  more  sacred  than 
the  interests  of  party.     Who  knows? 

The  value  of  Burke  to  them  was  that  he  did  possess 
brains  of  a  sort.  However  one  may  disagree  with  his 
principles  and  distrust  his  sincerity,  the  fact  remains  that 
it  was  not  safe  to  get  within  reach  of  his  tongue  or  his 
pen  unless  one  was  equally  heavily  armed  or  at  least 
regardless  of  one's  reputation.  The  governing  persons 
of  that  day,  very  much  like  their  successors  now,  were 
by  no  means  a  well-educated  class  as  the  school  board 
inspectors  understand  the  term.  Prime  Ministers  are  re- 
ported, on  good  authority,  to  have  been  in  the  habit  of 
giving  instructions  for  the  seizure  of  new  colonies  before 
they  were  quite  sure  where  they  were  on  the  map.  Plenty 
of  them  were  very  brilliant  men  at  dinner-parties,  and 
even  in  the  Houses  of  Parliament,  if  they  had  but  the 
delicate  balance  between  enough  wine  and  not  too  much 
of  it.  But  few  of  them  had  the  plodding  patience  to 
acquire  the  sort  of  solid  knowledge  which  Burke  placed 
at  their  disposal.  He  was  the  sort  of  fellow  who  could 
read  a  dozen  pages  of  the  Encyclopccdia  Britannica  with- 
out having  to  interrupt  his  study  in  order  to  shoot  a  par- 
tridge or  hunt  a  fox.  He  could  write  long  paragraphs 
about  finance,  without  having  to  inquire,  like  Lord  Ran- 
dolph Churchill,  what  "the  damned  dots''  meant.  He 
could  discuss  questions  of  trade  and  industry.  He  could 
spin  quite  long  sentences  on  all  manner  of  subjects  with- 
out making  himself  look  foolish,  and  generally  with  the 
effect  of  making  his  opponents  appear  entirely  ridiculous. 

Beyond  his  power  of  detailed  knowledge,  Burke  had  a 
still  more  useful  quality  in  public  life.  He  could  write 
or  speak  a  sentence  of  bounteous  gracefulness  that  made 


194    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

everybody  feel  that  it  was  noble  and  right  and  beyond 
further  argument.  At  his  best  he  was  a  real  poet  and 
artist  in  words;  even  at  his  worst  he  was  a  first-class  melo- 
dramatist.  Of  the  former  rank,  there  is  above  all  that 
passage  in  his  reply  to  the  Duke  of  Bedford  where  he 
writes  of  the  death  of  his  only  son.  "The  storm  has  gone 
over  me;  and  I  lie  like  one  of  those  old  oaks  which  the 
late  hurricane  has  scattered  about  me.  I  am  stripped  of 
all  my  honours,  I  am  torn  up  by  the  roots,  and  lie  pros- 
trate on  the  earth.  ...  I  am  alone.  I  have  none  to 
meet  my  enemy  at  the  gate.  Indeed,  my  lord,  I  greatly 
deceive  myself  if  in  this  hard  season  I  would  give  a  peck 
of  refuse  wheat  for  all  that  is  called  fame  and  honour 
in  the  world.  ...  I  live  in  an  inverted  order.  They  who 
ought  to  have  succeeded  me  are  gone  before  me.  They 
who  should  have  been  to  me  as  posterity  are  in  the  place 
of  ancestors."  And  in  the  next  paragraph  there  is  an 
example  of  his  pungency  when  he  goes  on:  "The  Crown 
has  considered  me  after  long  service;  the  Crown  has  paid 
the  Duke  of  Bedford  in  advance.  He  has  had  a  long 
credit  for  any  service  which  he  may  perform  hereafter." 
It  was  this  extraordinary  blending  of  stately  prose  with 
something  much  more  like  pig-sticking  that  made  Burke 
so  conspicuous.  He  could  turn  a  phrase  with  the  same 
sort  of  skill  that  the  experienced  craftsman  can  turn  a 
table-leg.  The  subject  of  colonial  policy  in  America 
brought  forth  many  of  the  best  examples  of  his  art: 
"The  question  with  me  is,  not  whether  you  have  a  right 
to  render  your  people  miserable;  but  whether  it  is  not 
your  interest  to  make  them  happy.  It  is  not  what  a 
lawyer  tells  me  I  may  do,  but  what  humanity,  reason  and 
justice  tell  me  I  ought  to  do."     Then  he  had  a  ripe  sense 


EDMUND  BURKE  195 

of  irony:  "The  temper  and  character  which  prevail  in 
our  colonies  are,  I  am  afraid,  unaherable  by  any  human 
art.  We  cannot,  I  fear,  falsify  the  pedigree  of  this  fierce 
people,  and  persuade  them  that  they  are  not  sprung  from 
a  nation  in  whose  veins  the  blood  of  freedom  circulates. 
The  language  in  which  they  would  hear  you  tell  them 
this  tale  would  detect  the  imposition;  your  speech  would 
betray  you.  An  Englishman  is  the  unfittest  person  on 
earth  to  argue  another  Englishman  into  slavery."  While 
the  sentence  turning  on  John  Hampden  and  his  twenty- 
shilling  shipmoney  tax  is  too  hackneyed  to  quote. 

But  perhaps  Burke's  most  fruitful  gift  from  his  fairy 
godmother  was  the  capacity  to  see  everything  through 
the  coloured  glass  of  sentiment.  Burke  had  a  good  intel- 
lectual foundation  of  quite  solid  reason.  But  the  slightest 
whiff  of  sentiment,  and  that  intellect  was  shaken  to  its 
roots,  and  the  man  of  reason  became  the  sport  of  the 
most  childish  emotions.  We  have  seen  that  the  memory 
of  Marie-Antoinette's  face  was  enough  to  overturn  any 
historical  facts  that  were  in  his  mind.  It  is  undignified 
to  watch  this  mature  statesman  writing  of  the  French 
Revolution  as  though  it  were  a  thing  of  fiction,  in  the 
telling  of  which  he  need  not  keep  to  the  evidence.  For 
his  conception  of  the  virtuous  monarchy  of  France  was 
scarcely  anything  but  fiction.  Poor  Louis  Seize  was  not 
far  from  a  simpleton  (although  an  honourable  and  en- 
tirely well-meaning  one)  ;  Louis  XV,  before  him,  had 
been  an  idle  rake;  and  Louis  XIV  had  tried  to  make 
democratic  Frenchmen  believe  that  their  autocratic  King 
was  God's  deputy  on  earth.  It  certainly  would  have  been 
much  juster  if  he  had  been  guillotined  instead  of  Louis 
XVI,  who  had  to  bear  all  the  pains  of  his  ancestors'  mis- 


196    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

deeds.  If  any  one  person  was  responsible  for  the  Revo- 
lution it  was  that  proud,  narrow-minded  woman,  Marie- 
Antoinette,  who  played  the  tyrant  over  her  weak  husband, 
as  Madame  Roland  bullied  hers.  The  Queen  had  cour- 
age, but  stupid  bravery  has  ruined  more  nations  than  it 
has  saved.  That  Burke  should  have  detected  any  virtues 
in  this  Queen  of  France  worthy  of  modifying  the  national 
demand  for  reform  rules  him  outside  the  company  of 
rational  men.  If  all  the  reformers  were  as  bad  as  he 
painted  them — and  they  almost  were — that  was  no  reason 
for  dragging  Marie-Antoinette  into  the  discussion.  A 
philosopher  would  have  dismissed  her  as  nothing  but  a 
nuisance,  in  the  way  of  reasonable  debate.  She  was  a 
disagreeable  fact,  it  is  only  too  true,  but  that  was  no 
reason  why  Burke  should  turn  her  into  a  superstition. 
There  is  no  denying  the  truth.  Burke  could  at  times  be  a 
sentimentalist,  and  sometimes  of  the  most  maudlin  kind. 
It  is  kindest  to  try  to  believe  that  his  vein  of  snobbery 
was  due  to  nothing  else  but  his  sentimentality,  and  not 
to  a  self-seeking  desire  for  patronage.  Burke  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  an  intriguer  for  office  and  wealth;  if 
he  were  so,  he  was  a  bad  failure.  He  was  utterly  dis- 
gusted when  he  failed  to  get  office  in  the  Cabinet;  but 
he  certainly  does  not  appear  to  have  taken  the  steps 
usual  in  political  circles  to  get  such  an  advancement.  He 
was  a  snob  because  he  sincerely  believed  in  the  great  and 
rich  and  powerful.  He  was  intellectually  convinced  that 
they  were  entitled  to  the  respect  and  obedience  of  those 
below  them. 

A  rather  pitiable  example  of  Burke's  respect  for  rank 
is  the  letter  which  he  wrote  to  Catherine  of  Russia  in 
1 79 1,  encouraging  her  to  assist  the  French  emigres.     It 


EDMUND  BURKE  197 

would  be  hard  to  put  together  in  so  small  a  space  so 
much  ignorance  of  history,  perversion  of  present  facts, 
and  servility,  as  Burke  has  got  into  this  short  note.  "The 
debt  which  your  Imperial  Majesty's  august  predecessors 
have  contracted  to  the  ancient  manners  of  Europe,  by 
means  of  which  they  civilized  a  vast  empire,"  has  its 
humorous  side  when  one  remembers  the  number  of  heads 
Peter  the  Great  had  to  strike  off  before  he  could  bully 
Russia  into  accepting  Western  civilization  of  the  type  of 
Louis  XIV  and  its  centralized  autocracy.  He  congrat- 
ulates the  Empress  that  "your  sagacity  has  made  you 
perceive  that  in  the  case  of  the  Sovereign  of  France  the 
cause  of  all  sovereigns  is  tried;  that  in  the  case  of  its 
Church  the  cause  of  all  Churches;  and  that  in  the  case 
of  its  nobility  is  tried  the  cause  of  all  the  respectable 
orders  of  all  society  and  even  of  society  itself." 

In  that  one  sentence  one  can  see  all  Burke's  innate 
contempt  for  the  lower  orders  as  part  of  the  governing 
machinery  of  a  State.  That  one  should  believe  that  only 
an  aristocracy  of  brains  should  govern  is  an  arguable 
conception,  even  if  wrong;  and  the  purest  lovers  of  popu- 
lar freedom  sometimes  have  made  out  a  good  case  for 
a  hereditary  ruling  caste.  But  in  Burke's  case  it  went 
much  further  than  that.  Again  and  again  hasty  con- 
tempt for  the  poor  and  lowly  thrusts  itself  into  his  writ- 
ings. For  example,  when  he  discusses  the  new  French 
Assembly,  he  sizzles  with  indignation  that  humble  coun- 
try priests  should  go  to  Paris  and  sit  beside  noble-born 
bishops  in  the  States-General  of  their  land.  What,  he 
asks,  do  little  traders  know  of  governing?  Had  he 
really  been  the  impartial  scientific  statesman  he  professed 
to  be,  he  would  have  asked  if  they  could  possibly  know 


198    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

less  than  the  muddle-headed  rulers  of  France  who  had 
so  obviously  and  utterly  broken  down  in  their  attempts 
to  govern.  He  is  horrified  by  the  thought  of  more 
humane  life  in  the  army:  "The  soldier  is  told  he  is  a 
citizen,  and  has  the  rights  of  man  and  citizen."  Burke 
obviously  could  not  conceive  of  anyone  obeying  orders 
unless  he  was  coerced.  If  ever  there  were  a  narrow  class 
philosopher  it  was  Burke. 

His  flowing  talk  of  liberty  in  his  earlier  days  probably 
only  convinced  himself  and  the  other  sentimentalists.  But 
he  never  meant  his  talk  to  be  taken  too  seriously.  The 
idea  was  to  be  strictly  construed  with  the  terms  of  the 
legal  documents  which  were  drafted  by  the  Whig  victors 
who  won  when  William  of  Orange  was  accepted  as  King. 
It  is  strange  that  Burke,  who  professed  such  admiration 
for  the  constitutional  settlement  of  1688,  should  have 
got  into  such  a  condition  of  nerves  when  the  French  pro- 
posed to  define  their  constitutional  rights  also.  But  a 
liberty  which  was  based  on  sentiment  was  naturally  only 
a  thing  for  this  philosopher's  theoretical  hours.  "Grand, 
swelling  sentiments  of  liberty  I  am  sure  I  do  not  despise. 
They  warm  the  heart;  they  enlarge  and  liberate  our 
minds;  they  animate  our  courage  in  a  time  of  conflict. 
.  .  .  Every  politician  ought  to  sacrifice  to  the  graces, 
and  to  join  compliance  to  reason."  The  whole  paragraph 
is  charmingly  self-revealing.  Burke  classes  all  this  talk 
of  liberty  with  liqueurs  and  tonics.  It  was  a  mere  adorn- 
ment to  political  life  in  its  frivolous  moments.  Burke 
only  praised  liberty  on  paper;  at  the  first  appearance  of 
it  in  practical  life  he  fled  like  a  terrified  school-child. 
He  was  like  those  men  who  call  for  war  to  the  death — 
from  the  safe  spots  a  hundred  miles  behind  the  front  line 


EDMUND  BURKE  199 

— and  are  very  Indignant  when  asked  to  get  a  little  nearer 
the  danger  zone  of  active  affairs, 

Burke  was  quite  pleased  with  that  somewhat  stately 
aspect  of  human  society  which  is  called,  a  little  vaguely, 
political  liberty.  It  looked  very  well  when  drafted  in 
dignified  English  and  inserted  in  Petitions  of  Right  and 
such  documents.  It  made  a  basis  for  most  moving 
speeches  in  Parliament.  But  its  greatest  advantage  was 
that  it  was  fairly  easily  evaded  in  practice.  It  was  a 
splendid  thing  to  talk  about,  and  it  did  not  much  disturb 
everyday  life.  It  was,  in  fact,  the  politicians'  ideal. 
They  had  got  It  from  the  philosophers,  who  really  meant 
it  seriously;  but  it  was  the  politicians'  business  to  see  that 
such  admirable  theories  did  not  become  habits.  Burke 
did  this  work  more  successfully  than  most  men  who  have 
gone  Into  political  life.  His  evasive  touch  was  more 
subtle,  which  may  have  been  because  he  was  to  a  large 
extent  unconscious  of  what  he  was  doing.  Half  his  life 
Burke  was  a  dreamer  filled  with  his  emotions.  At  least, 
that  Is  the  kindest  way  of  judging  him. 

It  Is  a  little  difficult  to  know  how  he  ever  got  a  reputa- 
tion for  being  particularly  attached  to  the  principles  of 
popular  freedom,  when  all  the  time  he  was  so  obviously 
a  sound  defender  of  all  the  principles  of  privilege.  Per- 
haps it  was  his  treatment  of  the  question  of  the  American 
Colonies  that  gained  him  this  halo  of  liberalism.  But 
when  analysed.  It  was  one  of  his  most  energetic  defences 
of  the  desires  of  the  rich,  although  he  seems  to  have 
spoken  and  acted  In  all  Innocent  sincerity.  For  hard  logic 
and  artistic  skill  combined  it  would  be  hard  to  beat  his 
speeches  on  the  Colonies.  He  had  not  many  men  against 
him  who  were  capable  of  defending  themselves  with  much 


200    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

intellect;  but  Burke  left  their  weak  case  in  ruins.  But  if 
we  want  to  know  why  he  put  so  much  energy  into  it,  and 
what  was  the  key  to  all  his  arguments,  it  will  be  found 
(one  cannot  help  thinking)  not  in  his  classic  sentences  on 
Hampden  and  the  glories  of  English  freedom,  but  rather 
in  a  quiet  statement  of  fact  that  appears  in  his  speech  of 
April  1774.  "Lord  Rockingham  very  early  in  that  sum- 
mer (1765)  received  a  strong  representation  from  many 
weighty  English  merchants  and  manufacturers,  from 
governors  of  provinces  and  commanders  of  men-of-war, 
against  almost  the  whole  of  the  American  commercial 
regulations,  and  particularly  with  regard  to  the  total  ruin 
which  was  threatened  to  the  Spanish  trade." 

That  was  the  real  heart  of  the  Opposition's  fight  for 
American  liberty.  The  oppression  of  the  colonists  was 
ruining  English  trade.  It  was  very  clever  of  Burke  to 
talk  about  Hampden  and  the  glorious  Constitution.  That 
was  what  he  was  there  to  do;  the  nobles  and  gentlemen 
who  governed  the  British  Empire  had  not  the  education 
which  led  them  to  think  of  such  neat  arguments,  whereas 
it  was  the  literary  gentleman's  profession.  And  very 
admirably  he  did  his  work;  indeed,  he  had  an  excellent 
case,  of  which  the  purest-souled  philosopher  need  not 
have  been  ashamed.  We  lost  America  by  childish  blun- 
dering that  even  politicians  have  scarcely  ever  surpassed. 
There  was  nothing  heroic  about  the  colonists;  there  was 
more  of  sordid  economy  than  of  love  of  liberty  in  their 
attitude :  they  wanted  England  to  defend  their  interests 
without  themselves  having  to  pay  the  cost — at  least  that 
was  a  substantial  part  of  the  quarrel.  Anybody  but  a 
Grenville  and  his  friends  could  have  made  an  amicable 
settlement;  but  if  we  will  be  governed  by  stupid  persons 


EDMUND  BURKE  201 

we  must  lose  all  kinds  of  national  advantages,  as  well 
as  America.  If  even  the  City  merchants  were  anxious  to 
come  to  terms  with  the  Americans  then  there  was  no  need 
to  fight — for  the  City  has  almost  always  been  the  only 
element  that  desires  to  fight  anybody. 

The  case  against  a  war  with  America  was  that  it  would 
seriously  damage  our  trade.  As  Burke  said  in  his  speech : 
"The  whole  trading  interest  of  this  Empire  crammed  into 
your  lobbies,  with  a  trembling  and  anxious  expectation, 
waiting,  almost  to  a  winter's  return  of  light,  their  fate 
from  your  resolutions.  When  at  length  you  had  deter- 
mined in  their  favour  [by  repealing  the  Stamp  Act]  .  .  . 
there  arose  an  involuntary  burst  of  gratitude  and  trans- 
port." Burke,  when  he  stood  for  American  freedom, 
was  thus,  on  his  own  showing,  acting  on  the  advice  (shall 
we  say,  the  instructions?)  of  the  merchants  of  England. 
It  was  a  group  of  Imperialists  and  theorists  who  pushed 
their  country  into  this  calamitous  war:  the  kind  of  people 
who  to-day  would  bring  the  Empire  to  ruin  for  the  sake 
of  an  "all  red"  map. 

Burke  was  quite  candid  about  his  position.  As  we 
have  just  seen,  he  revealed  the  old  story  of  that  deputa- 
tion to  Lord  Rockingham,  and  in  another  sentence  repu- 
diated any  theoretical  views.  "I  am  not  here  going  into 
the  distinctions  of  rights,  not  attempting  to  mark  their 
boundaries.  I  do  not  enter  into  these  metaphysical  dis- 
tinctions; I  hate  the  very  sound  of  them.  Leave  the 
Americans  as  they  anciently  stood,  and  these  distinctions, 
born  of  an  unhappy  contest,  will  die  along  with  it."  One 
is  inclined  to  believe  that  this  passage  reveals  more  of 
Burke's  mind  than  many  remarks  which  have  received 
more  attention.     He  has  so  persistently  been  discussed  as 


202    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

a  man  who  dealt  in  high  theories  and  great  principles,  as 
a  delighter  in  the  abstract.  Nothing  could  be  further 
from  the  truth.  Burke  was  at  heart  a  materialist,  like 
most  sentimentalists.  He  was  so  vague  in  his  principles 
that  he  was  glad  to  cling  to  any  material  facts  that  came 
within  his  reach  as  he  was  being  swept  down  the  river  of 
his  emotions.  Whatever  his  reasons,  Burke  was  more 
matter-of-fact  a  politician  than  most  of  those  who  have 
got  the  credit  of  lofty  thinking. 

The  Bristol  electors  knew  their  man  when  they  chose 
him  to  represent  that  great  centre  of  eighteenth-century 
trade.  They  quarrelled  with  him  because  he  knew  so 
much  more  about  trading  affairs  than  they  did  them- 
selves that  he  wanted  to  increase  Bristol's  prosperity  by 
promoting  freer  trade  with  Ireland.  This  obviously 
rational  thing  (for  their  own  interests)  was  beyond  the 
brain-power  of  the  Bristol  merchants.  So  Burke  had  to 
surrender  his  parliamentary  seat  for  this  commercial  city. 
The  matter  of  trade  was  always  one  of  Burke's  main 
interests.  It  was  his  grasp  of  finance  and  commerce  that 
gave  him  such  an  easy  superiority  in  the  debates  on  the 
American  Colonies.  His  first  important  political  pam- 
phlet, Observations  on  the  Present  State  of  the  Nation 
(1769),  was  mainly  about  finance  and  trade.  It  was  the 
heyday  of  youthful  British  Imperialism;  and  it  would 
have  been  as  hard  for  a  man  without  imperialist  views 
to  attain  a  position  in  the  House  of  Parliament  of  that 
time  as  it  would  be  hard  for  a  fish  to  live  on  dry  land. 
Imperialism  was  the  atmosphere  of  governing  England 
at  that  moment.  Burke,  for  all  his  lofty  talk  about  prin- 
ciples, was  probably  more  concerned  about  the  prosperity 
of  trade  than  most  of  his  contemporaries  of  the  ruling 


EDMUND  BURKE  203 

set.  Being  a  good  deal  of  a  snob,  he  had  much  to  say 
about  the  "nobihty  and  gentry,"  but  he  seems  to  have 
reahzed  that  manufacture  and  commerce  were  rising  to 
the  first  place,  though  there  are  many  indications  that  he 
did  not  relish  the  change. 

Although  he  might  talk  and  write  in  terms  of  general 
principles,  yet  in  reality  Burke  mainly  thought  in  terms 
of  something  much  more  tangible.     The  American  War 
was  to  him  objectionable  because  it  was  ruining  trade. 
When  he  saw  it  at  the  first  glance,  he  was  quite  ready 
to  discuss  the  French  Revolution  as  it  concerned  the  beau- 
tiful and  romantic  Marie-Antoinette;  but  that  was  only 
in  the  first  flush  of  his  emotion.     Later  on,  when  he  had 
time  to  think  it  over  more  calmly,  he  wrote  in  the  fourth 
Letter  on  a  Regicide  Peace,  in  1797  :     "The  present  war 
is  above  all  others  (of  which  we  have  heard  or  read)   a 
war  against  landed  property."     This  materialist  philoso- 
pher could  imagine  nothing  more  terrible  happening  to 
an  individual  or  to  a  class  than  the  loss  of  his  wealth, 
for  he  largely  judged  men  by  the  measure  of  their  riches. 
When  it  fitted  into  his  argument,  he  could  be  as  coldly 
and  critically  matter-of-fact  as  any  bank  manager,   and 
could  define  his  terms  so  that  they  were  reduced  to  the 
simplest   elements.      Thus,   when  he  had  to   prove   that 
England  was  as  prosperous  as  France,  he  showed  that 
this   was   mainly   a    question    of   where    living   was    the 
cheaper;  but  even  that  simplification  is  not  clear  enough 
for  Burke's  mind,  and  he  continues  the  argument:     "It 
will  be  hard  to  prove  that  a  French  artificer  is  better  fed, 
clothed,  lodged,  and  warmed  than  one  in  England,  for 
that  is  the  sense,  and  the  only  sense,  of  living  cheaper." 
That  is  a  preciseness  of  language  highly  commendable  in 


204    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

a  writer  of  economics,  and,  if  Burke  had  kept  at  that 
level,  he  would — not  have  been  Burke. 

For  no  sooner  does  one  feel  convinced  by  innumerable 
proofs  from  his  writings  and  his  life  that  Burke  was  a 
cool-headed  thinker,  than  one  is  faced  with  equally  con- 
vincing evidence  proving  the  contrary,  it  would  seem. 
For  instance,  when  he  wants  to  prove  that  the  English 
Constitution  does  not  admit  of  any  tampering  with  the 
dynasty,  he  wrote:  "The  succession  of  the  Crown  has 
always  been  what  it  now  is — an  hereditary  succession  by 
law:  in  the  old  line  it  was  a  succession  by  the  common 
law;  in  the  new,  by  the  statute  law."  Now,  that  would 
be  quite  a  good  statement  if  it  were  not  that  there  are  so 
many  leading  cases  on  this  subject  in  English  history  to 
prove  Burke  utterly  wrong;  there  were  Canute,  William 
the  Conqueror,  Henry  IV,  Edward  IV,  Henry  VII,  and, 
lastly,  one  which  Burke  at  least  might  have  remembered 
when  he  wrote,  the  case  of  William  III.  His  whole 
argument  on  this  point  was  that  of  a  third-rate  counsel 
with  a  bad  case :  he  tried  to  bluff  the  bench  and  the  jury 
into  believing  that  Englishmen  had  never  broken  the  rule 
of  hereditary  succession  to  the  Crown. 

A  still  more  astounding  case  of  misjudgment  of  facts 
that  should  have  been  perfectly  clear  to  Burke  is  when 
he  writes  of  the  condition  of  European  civilization  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  revolutionary  epoch:  "In  the  long  scries 
of  ages  which  have  furnished  the  matter  of  history,  never 
was  so  beautiful  and  august  a  spectacle  presented  to  the 
moral  eye  as  Europe  afforded  the  day  before  the  Revolu- 
tion in  France."  A  man  whose  "moral  eye"  could  be 
soothed  by  the  cynicism  and  international  outrages  of 
Frederick  the  Great  and  Catherine  of  Russia,  who  could 


EDMUND  BURKE  205 

apply  adjectives  like  "beautiful"  and  "august"  to  the 
reckless  selfishness  of  a  Louis  XV,  can  scarcely  come  un- 
der the  description  of  a  precise  thinker.  With  such  a 
system  immediately  behind  him,  Burke  goes  on  "to  warn 
the  people  against  the  greatest  of  all  evils,  a  blind  and 
furious  spirit  of  innovation  under  the  name  of  religion." 
He  was  entitled  to  say,  and  indeed  he  was  right  in  saying, 
that  blind  innovation  was  a  folly  and  worse  than  a  folly, 
but  no  sane  man  could  have  said  that  reform  of  such  a 
system  was  "the  greatest  of  all  evils."  Such  a  sentence 
could  only  put  everything  out  of  perspective.  He  was 
still  more  preposterous  when  he  continued,  offering  the 
example  of  the  British  Constitution  to  the  French  as  a 
way  out  of  their  anarchy.  He  wrote  that  the  House  of 
Commons,  "without  shutting  its  doors  to  any  merit  in 
any  class,  is,  by  the  sure  operation  of  adequate  causes, 
filled  with  everything  illustrious  in  rank,  in  descent,  in 
hereditary  and  acquired  opulence,  in  cultivated  talents,  in 
military,  civil,  naval  and  political  distinction."  A  man 
who  could  write  such  a  sentence  would  be  a  splendid 
reporter  for  a  fashionable  wedding,  and  he  would  have 
many  of  the  qualities  which  go  to  make  an  agreeable 
Bond  Street  hairdresser;  but  as  a  judicial  statement  of 
the  real  merits  of  the  English  House  of  Commons  it  has 
insuperable  defects. 

With  such  violent  contrasts  of  character  before  us 
when  we  consider  Burke  as  a  whole,  it  is  very  hard  to 
believe  that  he  was  always  quite  straightforward.  If  he 
had  sound  brains  (and  so  much  of  his  work  is  so  clever 
that  it  is  hard  to  think  otherwise),  could  he  have  made 
such  astounding  errors  in  fact  without  knowing  what  he 
was  doing?    With  all  his  knowledge  of  the  world  and  its 


2o6    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

history,  did  he  really  believe  himself  justified  in  per- 
suading his  readers  that  prerevolutionary  Europe  was  a 
triumph  of  morality,  and  that  the  British  House  of  Com- 
mons contained  the  pick  of  the  wisdom  of  his  country? 
One  is  tempted  to  reply  shortly  that  Burke  must  have 
been  a  deliberate  humbug.  And  yet  there  was  a  good 
deal  more  of  the  child  about  him  than  the  knave.  In  his 
earlier  days  he  wrote :  "I  am  not  one  of  those  who  think 
that  the  people  are  never  in  the  wrong.  .  .  .  But  I  do 
say  that  in  all  disputes  between  them  and  their  rulers 
the  presumption  is  at  least  upon  a  par  in  favour  of  the 
people."  And  if  anyone  handed  him  that  sentence  (and 
many  did)  in  later  days,  when  he  had  spent  the  rest  of  his 
life  in  denying  its  truth,  he  would  not  have  seen  the  joke; 
he  would  have  been  unconscious  of  anything  absurd  in  his 
logical  behaviour  or  his  consistence  of  thought. 

Burke  had  one  of  those  disorderly  minds  that  may 
produce  a  reasonable  thought  or  a  wrong  one.  He  had  a 
large  brain,  but  it  never  seems  to  have  reduced  its  parts 
to  obedience.  It  was  never  certain  what  would  happen 
therein,  and  what  would  come  thereout.  Perhaps  it  was 
that  he  never  grasped  one  or  two  fundamental  truths 
about  the  universe,  so  that  everything  floated  aimlessly 
around  him.  Or  perhaps  it  was  what  one  might  call  a 
want  of  moral  conviction.  He  went  through  life  as  a 
homeless  tramp.  He  started  with  the  foundations  of  a 
fine  intellect;  but  for  some  reason  he  took  to  loose  intel- 
lectual living,  and  finished  up  as  one  who  had  become  not 
very  far  from  a  degenerate.  When  he  died  he  was  living 
in  a  world  of  his  own  emotions,  and  they  were  only  very 
remotely  related  to  the  facts  of  the  world.  He  had, be- 
come a  kind  of  auto-cannibal — living  on  his  own  thoughts. 


EDMUND  BURKE  207 

He  became  entirely  subjective,  and  spun  his  opinions  not 
out  of  the  experience  of  external  things  as  they  were 
really  happening  around  him,  but  out  of  those  internal 
imaginations  which  he  began  to  mistake  for  the  outer 
world.  He  built,  at  last,  one  or  two  fixed  principles,  with 
which  this  aimless  wanderer  tried  to  find  a  little  peace  in 
his  old  age;  but  they  were  principles  which  had  so  little 
to  do  with  real  life  that  they  were  poor  anchorage  for  a 
human  soul. 

The  great  tragedy  was  the  French  Revolution.  With 
an  idee  fixe  that  property  and  rank  were  the  only  certain 
factors  of  the  social  system,  one  can  imagine  Burke's  hor- 
ror at  the  events  in  France.  A  man  who  had  dismissed 
most  of  the  essentials  of  humanity  and  put  them  outside 
his  conception  of  society — for  this  was  what  Burke  had 
necessarily  done  when  he  made  such  as  Marie-Antoinette 
the  central  figure  of  his  social  picture — inevitably  could 
see  nothing  but  anarchy  in  the  great  Revolution.  In  quite 
an  unattached  manner  one  has  recently  happened  upon  a 
character  which  seems  very  helpful  in  the  analysis  of 
Edmund  Burke.  Marie  Bolshkaseva  was  one  of  the 
women  who  enlisted  in  the  Battalion  of  Death  in  the  Rus- 
sian Army  during  the  late  war.  She  has  written  her 
reminiscences,  in  which  appears  the  following  passage: 
"I  came  across  a  couple  hiding  behind  a  trunk  of  a  tree. 
One  of  the  pair  was  a  girl  belonging  to  the  Battalion  and 
the  other  a  soldier.  They  were  making  love !  .  .  .  I  was 
almost  out  of  my  senses.  My  mind  failed  to  grasp  that 
such  a  thing  could  be  really  happening  at  the  moment 
when  we  were  trapped  like  rats  at  the  enemy's  mercy. 
My  hc^rt  turned  into  a  raging  cauldron.  In  an  instant 
I  flung  myself  upon  the  couple.    I  ran  my  bayonet  through 


2o8     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

the  girl.  The  man  took  to  his  heels  before  I  could  strike 
him." 

That  was  almost  precisely  Burke's  mental  condition 
when  he  discovered  the  French  Revolution — though  it 
was  not  hiding  behind  a  tree.  One  can  imagine  this 
hysterical  woman  in  cold  blood  killing  the  girl  in  an 
attempt  to  maintain  discipline  in  a  moment  of  peril.  But 
that  her  heart  should  become  a  "raging  cauldron"  at  the 
sight  of  a  human  passion  which  is  even  more  primitive 
than  the  lust  for  war,  is  surely  sufficient  to  put  Marie 
Bolshkaseva  out  of  sane  society.  And  in  just  the  same 
way  Burke  became  a  cauldron  Avhen  he  was  faced  by  the 
great  elementary  passions  of  the  French  Revolution.  Be- 
cause Marie-Antoinette  had  an  attractive  manner  and 
Robespierre  and  Marat  were  unbalanced  fanatics — like 
himself — and  a  few  dozen  others  were  scoundrels,  he 
forgot  that  ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred  French  men 
and  women  were  normal  human  beings,  who  were  living 
under  conditions  when  every  human  instinct  was  exagger- 
ated to  the  highest  degree.  Burke  could  only  run  his 
bayonet  through  a  healthy  nation  that  had  lost  its  pres- 
ence of  mind  in  a  moment  of  excitement.  Like  Marie 
Bolshkaseva,  he  had  lost  his  sense  of  proportion  in  human 
affairs,  and  could  only  meet  panic  by  hysteria.  Spurred 
on  by  Burke's  own  cries  of  alarm,  the  Kings  of  Europe 
advanced  to  attack  France,  which  was  in  imminent  dan- 
ger; and  when  the  people  of  France,  in  the  terror  of 
self-defence,  became  primitive  in  their  passions,  Burke 
lost  his  intellectual  balance  and  could  not  distinguish  the 
permanent  from  the  trivial. 

Burke  was  a  hopeless  failure.  He  wrote  as  If  he  had 
the  intention  to  reform  the  British  Constitution,  and  he 


EDMUND  BURKE  209 

did  nothing  more  than  aholish  a  few  superfluous  offices 
round  the  Court.  He  tried  to  save  the  American  Col- 
onies from  disruption  from  the  Motherland,  and  the 
argument  degenerated  into  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to 
save  the  credit  of  a  few  London  merchants  who  could  not 
collect  their  colonial  debts.  He  imagined  that  he  had  a 
gospel  of  liberty  to  preach  to  the  British  people;  but  it 
turned  out  that  it  was  only  a  pompous  sermon  on  the 
ideals  of  the  political  adventurers  of  1688.  He  began 
with  much  talk  of  Freedom,  and  he  ended  by  being  the 
mouthpiece  of  every  tyrannical  instrument  in  Europe. 
He  began  with  the  Sublime  and  the  Beautiful;  and  it 
appeared  that  his  ideal  was  the  figure  of  a  narrow-minded 
Queen  and  the  symbols  of  a  narrow  social  caste.  Burke 
began  as  a  philosopher,  and  he  finished  as  something  not 
very  far  from  a  snob.  He  was  honest  and  less  self- 
seeking  than  is  usual  amongst  ambitious  men;  but  his  life- 
work  was  wrecked  because  his  intellect  was  always  at 
the  mercy  of  his  emotions. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BENJAMIN  DISRAELI,  EARL  OF  BEACONSFIELD 
(1804-1881) 

IT  was  perhaps  inevitable  that,  sooner  or  later,  Eng- 
land should  be  ruled  by  an  alien,  who  was  not  even 
a  European,  but  an  Oriental  of  the  race  of  the  Jews. 
It  was  by  no  means  inevitable — but  merely  our  happy 
fate — that  this  foreign  conqueror  should  also  be  a  poet 
and  a  dreamer,  a  historian  and  a  gentleman.  As  Sidney 
Smith  said,  "We  owe  much  to  the  Jews";  and  among 
our  many  debts  is  that  they  have  given  us  one  of  the  few 
charming  modern  statesmen.  Disraeli  is  interesting  quite 
beyond  the  scope  of  the  scientific  historical  student;  he  is 
not  such  as  the  Pitts  and  the  Foxes,  and  their  kindred, 
whom  we  must  endure  (if  we  are  sociologically  minded) 
because  they  have  intruded  so  obtrusively  into  English 
history.  The  Earl  of  Beaconsfield  would  have  been 
charming  if  he  had  never  appeared  on  a  page  of  our 
national  records;  when  he  does  appear  thereon,  he  is  as 
a  fine  jewel  on  the  dust-heap  of  our  political  life. 

It  is  almost  an  established  rule  of  history  that  a  race 
is  rarely  governed  by  one  of  its  own  blood.  Certainly  in 
this  country  the  alien  has  been  the  rule  and  not  the  excep- 
tion, if  we  consider  the  list  of  our  monarchs.  William 
the  Conqueror  and  his  sons  were  Norman  dukes;  the 
Plantagenets    were    French    nobles;    the    Tudors    were 

210 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  2 1 1 

Welsh,  If  Tudor  Vychan  ap  Gronw  as  an  ancestor  be 
admitted  as  evidence  of  race.  The  Stuarts  were  Nor- 
mans who  had  become  Scots;  and  when  their  national 
taste  for  continual  theological  discussion  at  last  led  to 
their  final  expulsion,  they  were  succeeded  by  a  Dutchman, 
who  in  turn  gave  way  to  the  German  dynasty  from  Han- 
over. It  is  clear  that  kings,  like  the  prophets,  are  without 
honour  in  their  own  country.  But  a  people  rarely  has 
much  choice  in  the  selecting  of  its  monarch.  In  the  case 
of  a  prime  minister  it  has  generally  been  held  that  election 
is  more  democratic,  and  there  has  always  been  a  persistent 
wish  on  the  part  of  Englishmen  that  the  ministers  of 
their  foreign  kings  should  be  home-bred.  Our  ancestors 
willingly  elected  a  Dutchman  or  a  Hanoverian  for  their 
king;  they  would  on  no  account  tolerate  their  foreign 
friends  in  the  ministry. 

As  already  said,  Disraeli  was  by  blood  not  even  a 
European,  but  an  Asiatic.  He  was  an  entire  novelty  in 
our  higher  governing  circles,  a  new  comet.  He  was  al- 
ready dazzling  England  when  it  was  still  unlawful  for  a 
Jew  to  sit  in  Parliament.  It  so  happened  that  his  father 
had  paid  more  attention  to  pure  literature  than  to  pure 
dogma,  so  Benjamin  his  son  had  grown  in  a  circle  that 
was  so  callous  of  religious  form  that  this  pure  Jew  was 
baptized  as  a  Christian  in  his  early  teens.  Nevertheless, 
he  was  a  Jew,  notoriously,  to  all  who  could  read  as  they 
ran.  When  Queen  Victoria  was  asked  to  accept  him  as 
a  Minister  of  State,  it  was  much  like  asking  a  quiet  house- 
wife to  take  a  Chinese  cook  or  a  Red  Indian  for  a  butler. 
The  poor  Queen  was  clearly  embarrassed;  she  told  Lord 
Derby  that  she  only  accepted  this  strange  creature  on  his 
express  guarantee  that  nothing  untoward  would  occur. 


212     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

When  Disraeli,  as  Leader  of  the  House  (which  he  be- 
came in  1852),  fulfilled  his  official  duty  of  writing  to  his 
Sovereign  the  nightly  letter  on  the  events  of  the  sitting, 
his  mistress  was  almost  puzzled.  She  wrote  to  her  uncle, 
the  King  of  the  Belgians,  "Mr.  Disraeli  {alias  Dizzy) 
writes  very  curious  reports  to  me  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons' proceedings."  It  was  as  if  she  had  received  the 
washing  list  made  out  in  Chinese.  The  curiosity  grew 
to  be  one  of  her  most  trusted  friends. 

There  were  two  Benjamin  Disraelis,  both  charming 
and  brilliant  men,  but  clearly  distinguishable  from  each 
other.  At  a  first  glance  one  would  go  no  further  than 
placing  them  in  widely  separate  branches  of  the  same 
family.  There  was  the  one  who  went  into  politics  and 
made  such  a  huge  success  in  the  House  of  Commons.  All 
the  while  he  was  on  the  stage  of  the  Commons  Europe 
was  holding  its  sides  with  laughter,  and  Sir  Robert  Peel 
wished  that  he  (himself  or  Disraeli,  or  both)  had  never 
been  born.  This  political  member  of  the  family  was  a 
ruthless  opponent,  and  when  he  got  his  enemy  by  the 
neck  dealt  with  him  much  as  a  terrier  deals  with  rats. 
He  was  as  clever  a  man  at  a  party  intrigue  as  could  be 
found  in  Westminster  society — so  clever,  indeed,  that  it 
was  a  long  time  before  anyone  would  entrust  their  polit- 
ical honour  to  his  keeping;  but  that  was  chiefly  because 
they  were  afraid  he  would  behave  towards  them  as  they 
would  have  done  to  him,  if  they  had  the  skill.  Half  his 
life  this  Disraeli  was  regarded  as  something  between  a 
charlatan  and  a  mountebank;  and  during  the  rest  of  his 
career  he  was  the  most  trusted  friend  and  servant  of  our 
primmest  Queen,  and  all  Europe  was  listening  for  his 
next  words  of  wisdom. 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  213 

Then  there  was  the  other  man  with  the  same  name  and 
the  same  face.  This  distantly  related  Disraeli  was  a 
dreamer,  who  kept  himself  to  himself  because  he  had  the 
timid  manners  of  all  people  who  are  of  delicate  tastes. 
It  is  said  that  it  was  difficult  to  make  this  Disraeli  talk; 
which  was  not  unnatural,  for  he  lived  in  a  far-away  world 
of  fancies  which  could  scarcely  be  translated  into  words. 
He  was  a  mystic,  and  regarded  ordinary  human  beings 
as  dull  utilitarians  who  bored  him  when  they  did  not  dis- 
gust him.  Unlike  his  political  relation,  who  spent  his 
whole  life  (almost  without  time  to  eat  or  sleep)  at  the 
Houses  of  Parliament,  this  poetical  Disraeli  was  an  idler 
and  a  flirt,  who  thought  there  was  nothing  in  the  world  so 
delightful  as  a  charming  woman  in  her  most  bewitching 
mood.  This  mystical  creature  of  imagination,  when  he 
would  condescend  to  come  to  earth  and  treat  of  mortals, 
liked  most  of  all  to  land  in  the  romantic  East,  where 
things  do  not  happen  in  the  humdrum  way  of  Paris  and 
London. 

So  there  are  two  Benjamin  Disraelis:  the  politician 
who  was  the  greatest  success  of  London  and  Western 
Europe,  and  the  poet  who  lived  in  the  East,  where  the 
family  was  born.  So  there  must  obviously  be  two  bio- 
graphical notices,  unless — which  seems  altogether  im- 
probable— it  can  be  shown  that  the  two  men  are  the  same. 
By  a  lengthy  process  of  collating  the  two  different  sources 
of  evidence  (the  details  of  which  would  unnecessarily 
trouble  the  reader),  this  difficult  task  has  been  accom- 
plished; and  it  has  been  proved  for  all  practical  purposes 
that  the  Disraeli  who  told  the  politicians  (in  his  romances 
of  Coningshy  and  Sybil)  that  they  were  a  set  of  disreputa- 
ble scoundrels  was  the  same  man  who  in  a  few  years  made 


214    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

them  choose  him  as  Prime  Minister  of  Great  Britain. 
And  it  is  now  beyond  all  reasonable  doubt  that  the  man 
who  spent  his  early  days  in  fashionable  salons  and  yellow 
waistcoats  was  the  same  person  who  went  into  politics 
with  the  message  to  the  gentlemen  of  England  that  unless 
they  remembered  their  duty  to  the  labouring  poor  of 
their  country  it  would  soon  go  very  badly  for  their  gen- 
tlemanly souls  and  estates. 

At  one  moment  a  man  of  ultra  fashion,  and  the  next 
a  social  revolutionary  with  a  passionate  zeal  that  made 
the  ordinary  reformer  seem  an  amateur  or  a  faddist. 
Now  the  most  worldly  of  cynics,  the  next  the  most  wor- 
shipful and  devout  of  believers — one  feels  that  this  is  not 
a  human  mind,  but  much  rather  a  psychological  text-book. 
But  the  classification  will  look  simpler  when  we  have  made 
that  great  division  into  the  Disraeli  who  wrote  in  his 
study  and  lived  in  his  thoughts,  and  the  Disraeli  who 
appeared  on  the  political  platform  and  lived  that  he 
might  do  well  at  Westminster.  It  would  seem  to  have 
been  by  a  very  deliberate  choice  that  he  himself  made 
this  distinction  in  his  life,  although  to  the  outside  ob- 
server it  seems  an  impossible  choice  that  made  a  poet 
callously  deliver  his  soul  into  the  keeping  of  those  who 
train  politicians.  But  the  accomplished  fact  faces  us 
beyond  all  argument:  Disraeli  had  the  mind  of  a  poet 
and  he  did  become  Prime  Minister  of  Great  Britain.  Wc 
may  find  what  explanation  we  please,  but  the  thing  itself 
is  beyond  discussion. 

His  wife — by  no  means  the  least  of  the  mysteries  of 
this  mysterious  man  from  the  East — once  wrote  down 
the  character  of  her  husband,  as  they  do  in  confession 
books.     She     expressed     seventeen     precise     statements 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  215 

about  him,  of  which  the  first  was  "Very  calm,"  and  the 
last  was  "His  whole  soul  is  devoted  to  politics  and  ambi- 
tion," and  in  the  middle  of  the  list  we  read,  "Often  says 
what  he  does  not  think."  It  is  a  masterly  little  picture 
she  gives  us,  somewhat  in  the  manner  of  the  latest  im- 
pressionalists  in  paint,  who  pick  out  essentials  and  ignore 
the  unimportant.  The  evidence  may  be  prejudiced;  but 
for  what  it  is  worth  we  should  remember  that  the  wife 
considered  her  husband  "Very  patient,  very  studious, 
very  generous."  Perhaps,  a  little  further  from  the  pic- 
ture, we  can,  with  these  hints,  see  the  whole  even  better 
than  the  wife  could  see  it — for  it  is  impossible  to  reveal 
all  to  one  who  lives  in  the  same  house;  it  would  be  as  if 
we  lived  with  the  Recording  Angel. 

The  main  factors  are  fairly  clear.  Benjamin  Disraeli 
found  himself  living  in  an  alien  country,  where,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  there  was  a  deep  prejudice  against  his  race.  Be- 
ing a  Jew,  he  also  must  have  early  discovered  that  he  was 
more  alert  and  brilliant  than  the  great  mass  of  his  neigh- 
bours. It  could  not  have  been  very  long,  indeed,  before 
he  saw  that  he  was  very  much  more  alert  and  very  much 
more  brilliant  than  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  out  of 
every  thousand  of  the  men  and  women  he  met.  Is  it  sur- 
prising that  this  young  man  had  great  ambitions?  It  was 
one  of  those  cases  where  the  ambition  was  almost  as  great 
as  the  ability.  But  if  this  charming  boy  had  not  been  am- 
bitious for  himself,  his  women  friends  would  have  inter- 
vened on  his  behalf.  All  through  his  life  he  preached 
(almost  with  the  earnestness  of  a  Nonconformist  parson) 
the  exhilarating  and  beneficial  influence  of  women  on  a 
man's  career.  Many  women  intervened  in  his  life — and, 
indeed,  there  was  more  than  a  good  excuse  for  interest- 


2i6    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

ing  oneself  in  young  Disraeli,  who  did  nothing  that  would 
damp  this  zeal.  Sarcastic  observers  thought  he  dressed 
so  beautifully  to  please  these  ladies,  and  he  certainly 
seemed  to  have  mistaken  smoky  London  for  Arcadia,  if 
we  judge  by  the  rainbow  colours  of  his  garments.  But 
he  gave  his  lady  friends  more  than  a  gorgeous  cavalier. 
In  his  diary  he  wrote  when  he  was  sixteen:  "Resolu- 
tion— to  be  always  sincere  and  open  with  Mrs.  E.  Never 
to  say  but  what  I  mean — point  de  moquerie,  in  which  she 
thinks  I  excel."  If  this  unknown  lady's  ghost  can  still 
take  satisfaction  in  its  past,  she  will  have  known  long  ere 
this  that  she  probably  had  more  influence  over  this  man's 
life  than  Bolingbroke  and  Sir  Robert  Peel,  who  by  chance 
have  more  attracted  the  attention  of  the  stately  his- 
torians. Then  there  was  the  other  woman  who  "said 
to  me  one  day,  and  before  I  had  shown  any  indication 
of  my  waywardness,  'You  have  too  much  genius  for 
Frederick  Place  [the  great  solicitor's  office  in  which  he 
was  apprenticed]  :  it  will  never  do.'  We  were  good 
friends.  She  married  a  Devonshire  gentleman  and  was 
the  mother  of  two  general  officers,"  was  the  boy's  rem- 
iniscence when  he  was  over  seventy  and  an  earl. 

By  the  time  he  was  twenty  the  frivolity  of  so  much 
feminine  society  and  so  many  flirtations  had  so  steadied 
his  career  that  Mr.  John  Murray  could  write  in  1825: 
"He  is  a  good  scholar,  hard  student,  a  deep  thinker,  of 
great  energy,  equal  perseverance,  and  indefatigable  ap- 
plication, and  a  complete  man  of  business.  His  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature  and  the  practical  tendency  of  mind 
and  heart  are  as  pure  as  when  they  were  first  formed 
...  as  playful  as  a  child."  It  was  not  a  bad  result  for 
a  few  years'  dainty  flirtations;  his  lady  friends  had  put 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  217 

him  on  the  road  of  one  of  the  most  original  and  most 
useful  careers  in  English  history — whereas  he  might 
have  been  driven  by  an  unkind  fate  to  a  university  and 
the  society  of  tutors  who  were  more  fit  to  train  bishops 
and  members  for  the  best  London  clubs.  The  garrison 
officers  at  Malta,  which  he  visited  in  1830,  called  Disraeli 
"that  damned  bumptious  Jew  boy";  but  then  most  of 
them  had  been  to  the  public  schools  and  had  a  natural 
dread  of  imagination  and  a  quick  wit,  and  the  still 
quicker  tongue  of  a  man  who  thus  described  himself  in 
his  Diary  of  1833:  "My  mind  is  continental.  It  is  a 
revolutionary  mind.  .  .  .  Poetry  is  the  safety-valve  of 
my  passions,  but  I  wish  to  act  what  I  write." 

A  man  who  was  seeking  a  great  career  at  the  time 
when  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832  shook  England  was  more 
likely  than  not  to  turn  to  politics,  as  a  youth  of  Eliza- 
beth's England  turned  to  play-writing  with  Shakespeare 
or  to  seafaring  with  Drake,  while  the  boys  of  the  Tudors 
dreamed  of  Court  offices  and  ecclesiastical  lands,  and 
Chatham's  contemporaries  set  out  to  plunder  India.  But 
the  Reform  Bill  set  a  new  fashion  in  life  adventures — the 
mode  became  political.  Disraeli  was  clearly  made  for 
the  part,  if  he  could  sink  his  better  nature  and  decide  to 
play  the  game.  The  men  already  in  it  had  discovered  the 
new  adventurer;  and  one  day  Lord  John  Russell,  no  less, 
"fished  as  to  whether  I  should  support  them.  I  answered, 
'They  had  one  claim  upon  my  support;  they  needed  it,' 
and  no  more."  In  1832  he  wrote:  "I  sat  between  Peel 
and  Herries.  .  .  .  Peel  was  very  gracious.  ...  I  re- 
minded him  by  my  dignified  familiarity  both  that  he  was 
an  ex-Minister  and  I  a  present  Radical." 

He  called  himself  a  Radical,  but  his  friends  must  have 


2i8     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

been  a  little  puzzled  by  his  speeches.  When  he  went 
down  to  his  first  election  campaign  he  wrote :  "I  start  on 
the  high  Radical  interest,  and  take  down  strong  recom- 
mendatory epistles  from  O'Connell,  Hume,  Burdett,  and 
hoc  genus.  Toryism  is  worn  out,  and  I  cannot  conde- 
scend to  be  a  Whig."  He  was  clearly  uncertain  himself 
what  he  was,  as  the  party  whips  classify  politicians.  Dur- 
ing his  election  he  announced  that  he  was  independent  of 
both  parties;  he  added  that  he  was  sprung  from  the 
people,  and  it  was  only  when  he  was  chosen  by  the  de- 
mocracy that  the  Tories  tried  to  claim  him  as  their 
candidate.  He  soon  undeceived  both  parties.  ''The 
nearest  thing  to  a  Tory  in  disgrace  is  a  Whig  in  office," 
he  slashed  out  with  his  right;  and  then  came  a  blow  with 
his  left:  "The  Whigs  have  opposed  me,  not  I  them,  and 
they  shall  repent  it."  They  did,  not  at  that  election,  but 
for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Within  a  few  months  he  was 
fighting  again,  and  here  his  creed  was  becoming  clearer: 
"I  shall  withhold  my  support  from  every  Ministry  which 
will  not  originate  some  great  measure  to  ameliorate  the 
condition  of  the  lower  orders."  He  went  on  to  attack, 
that  "incapable  faction  who,  having  knavishly  obtained 
power  by  false  pretences,  sillily  suppose  that  they  will  be 
permitted  to  retain  it  by  half-measures.  .  .  .  Rid  your- 
selves of  all  that  political  jargon  and  factious  slang  of 
Whig  and  Tory,  two  names  with  one  meaning,  used  only 
to  delude  you.  ...  I  stand  here  without  party.  I  plead 
the  cause  of  the  people,  and  I  care  not  whose  policy  I 
arraign." 

But  we  are  now  faced  by  the  problem  of  all  political 
careers:  Can  we  believe  one  word  that  is  said  on  a 
political  platform?    If  we  are  to  believe  Disraeli  himself, 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  219 

we  most  certainly  should  be  sceptical.  He  was  already 
maintaining  that  the  politicians  were  frauds  and  hum- 
bugs; and,  like  the  Cretan  who  said  that  all  Cretans  were 
liars,  he  had  shaken  the  value  of  his  own  testimony.  It 
is  here  that  the  double  nature  of  Disraeli's  life  becomes 
so  useful  to  inquiring  biographers:  for  he  was  already 
explaining  his  opinions  elsewhere  than  on  political  plat- 
forms. He  had  already  written  the  Voyage  of  Captain 
Popanil/a  in  1827,  and,  like  almost  all  first  books,  it  con- 
tains most  of  what  its  author  had  to  say  to  the  world — 
the  rest  was  mainly  a  filling  out  of  the  details  and  more 
skilful  craftsmanship.  It  has  been  already  noted  that 
Edmund  Burke's  first  book  contained  a  great  deal  of  his 
life-history.  In  Coningsby  (1844),  Sybil  (1845)  and 
Tancred  (1847)  Disraeli  has  left  us  a  frank  political 
creed;  indeed,  much  more,  for  these  three  books  contain 
a  philosophy  of  life.  Cast  in  the  form  of  romance,  there 
is  little  attempt  to  conceal  that  they  are  a  gospel  of  moral 
and  political  reform  for  the  English  people.  In  the 
preface  to  the  first  of  the  three,  Disraeli  says  that  he  has 
only  used  the  method  of  fiction  because  it  "offered  the 
best  chance  of  influencing  opinion."  The  introduction  to 
Sybil  tells  "the  subject  which  these  volumes  aim  to  illus- 
trate— the  Condition  of  the  People."  In  other  words, 
quite  apart  from  his  public  career  as  a  politician,  running 
side  by  side  with  it  there  is  the  recorded  career  of  Disraeli 
as  a  philosopher  and  economist,  as  expressed  in  his  long 
series  of  books. 

It  does  not  need  much  study  of  these  books  to  see  that 
they  are  by  far  the  most  important  part  of  this  states- 
man's gift  to  his  country — it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say 
that  they  are  a  gift  to  the  thought  of  the  world.     They 


220    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

are  not  of  merely  temporary  Interest — like  the  interests 
of  most  matters   that   happen   in   parliamentary   circles. 
They  discuss  ideas  which  He  beneath  all  parties  and  pro- 
grammes, for  they  deal  with  the  fundamentals  of  human- 
ity.    Indeed,  they  take  particular  care  to  impress  on  the 
reader  that  most  of  the  antics  of  politicians  are  of  the 
most  trivial  importance   and  entirely  ignore  the   things 
that    matter.      Seeing   that   Disraeli    himself   went    into 
pohtics  and  apparently  behaved  as  most  other  politicians 
behave,   it  is  a  rare  advantage  to  be  able  to  check  his 
parliamentary  career  by  his  written  words.     There  can 
be  little  hesitation  in  putting  most  value,  as  evidence  of 
what  Disraeli  really  believed,  on  the  books.     There  is, 
first,  the  obvious  fact  that  public  life  at  Westminster  is 
one  long  series  of  compromises.     It  seems  the  unpleasant 
truth  that  a   man  does  not  accomplish  in  politics  what 
he   desires,  but  only  what  he  can.     The  history  of  an 
honest  man  as  an  active  statesman  is  not  the  record  of 
his  hopes,  but  of  his  disappointments.     The  Houses  of 
Parliament  are  paved  with  the  good  intentions  of  a  few 
honest  men,  and  their  failures  are  recorded  in  the  Statute 
Books.    There  are  dozens  of  passages  in  Disraeli's  works 
which  show  how  clearly  he  recognized  that  life  is  a  con- 
tinual compromise. 

There  is  irresistible  evidence  all  through  these  books 
that  it  was  in  them — not  in  Parhament — that  he  said 
what  he  believed.  The  sincerity  is  as  clear  as  any  evi- 
dence can  be.  For  there  was  every  reason  why  Disraeli 
should  not  have  written  such  books  at  such  a  moment  if 
he  was  only  another  political  adventurer,  as  many  said 
he  was.  Their  publication  was  one  of  the  most  astound- 
ingly  brave  things  in  English  political  history.    Here  was 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  221 

a  Jew,  consumed  with  a  vast  ambition  to  enter  parlia- 
mentary life,  who  possessed  the  most  limited  influence 
except  the  resources  of  his  own  unlimited  wits.  We  know 
from  almost  every  page  of  his  writings  that  he  was  con- 
scious that  political  life  was  one  long  intrigue  to  win  the 
help  of  those  in  possession,  the  privileged  governing 
classes  of  blood  and  wealth.  A  selfish  mean  man  would 
have  done  everything  at  such  a  moment  in  his  career  to 
help  people  to  forget  the  fact  that  he  was  an  alien  by 
blood,  a  descendant  of  a  hated  religious  faith,  a  lover 
of  democracy  and  of  liberty,  and  a  despiser  of  vulgar 
intrigue. 

What,  on  the  contrary,  did  Disraeli  do?  He  published 
to  the  world  this  trilogy  of  books,  in  the  first  of  which 
he  told  the  fine  gentlemen  who  were  ruling  England  that 
they  were  a  set  of  pompous  fools  at  the  best  and  some- 
thing much  more  evil  at  the  worst;  that  they  were  sur- 
rounded by  a  crowd  of  petty  intriguers  for  whom  the 
polite  dictionaries  could  supply  no  appropriate  adjective. 
In  the  second,  Sybil,  he  declared  that  the  boasted  wealth 
of  England  was  held  by  a  small  class  on  the  top  and  was 
wrung  from  the  labour  of  a  degraded  poor:  his  text  was 
that  there  were  two  nations,  "The  Rich  and  the  Poor," 
and  he  preached  his  sermon  without  much  regard  for  the 
feelings  of  the  former.  He  said  it  was  impossible  to  tell 
all  the  truth  about  the  unutterable  misery  of  the 
poor  because  "so  little  do  we  know  of  the  state  of  our 
own  country  that  the  air  of  improbability  which  the  whole 
truth  would  inevitably  throw  over  these  pages  might 
deter  some  from  their  perusal."  Then,  in  the  third 
book,  Tancred,  the  author  told  England  that  it  owed  the 
greater  part  of  its  faith  and  its  civilization  to  the  Jews, 


222     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

and  declared,  to  a  people  and  an  age  that  worshipped 
materialism,  that  the  spirit  was  more  than  matter,  and 
that  a  great  emotion  was  finer  than  a  scientific  formula. 

If  reckless  courage  be  any  test  of  sincerity,  could  any- 
thing be  more  conclusive  than  Disraeli's  action  at  this 
turning-point  in  his  political  career?  He  flung  down  the 
glove  to  everything  that  seemed  established  in  society. 
He  challenged  at  one  moment — for  all  his  ideas  can  be 
discovered  in  each  of  the  books,  though  in  each  the  stress 
is  thrown  on  one  particular  point — he  challenged  at  once 
Rank,  Wealth,  Prejudice,  just  at  the  moment  when  he 
was  attempting  to  persuade  all  those  supreme  powers  to 
make  him  a  member  of  their  governing  clique.  He  cer- 
tainly showed  respect  to  two  institutions,  the  Crown  and 
the  People;  but  they  were  the  weakest  forces  in  the  society 
of  that  day.  And  adventurers  do  not  generally  appeal  to 
the  weakest.  This  was  clearly  his  faith  and  not  his 
selfish  policy.  If  we  seek  the  real  Disraeli  we  must  go 
first  to  his  books,  and  only  in  the  second  place  to  his 
political  meetings.  What  he  said  and  did  in  Parliament 
will  be  discovered  of  small  importance  compared  with 
the  philosophy  and  imagination  of  his  books. 

If  one  can  judge  of  intentions  by  their  effects,  the  main 
object  of  Coningshy  was  to  make  the  governing  classes 
ridiculous.  Being  a  man  of  wit  and  imagination  himself, 
Disraeli  would  appear  to  have  considered  that  by  brilliant 
analysis  and  rapier-like  passes  he  could  deal  a  blow  to  the 
corrupt  mass  of  the  governing  body.  Being  an  alien,  he 
did  not  realize,  perhaps,  what  a  stolid  thing  is  the  British 
mind;  and  at  the  beginning  of  his  political  career  he  had 
scarcely  measured  the  unweighable  mass  of  the  men  in 
possession.     One  can  no  more  demoHsh  the  governing 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  223 

class  by  wit  and  wisdom  than  one  can  clean  mud  off  a  cart 
by  the  breath  of  one's  mouth.  If  it  had  been  possible, 
there  would  not  have  been  any  rulers  left  after  Disraeli 
had  dealt  with  them;  for  he  annihilated  them — they  only 
survived  by  the  monotony  of  habit. 

Conincfsby  opens  with  the  London  clubs  in  a  turmoil 
of  excitement  over  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832.  A  frantic 
attempt  was  being  made  to  keep  up  the  farce  that  the 
politicians  and  the  wirepullers  had  the  welfare  of  the 
nation  at  heart,  whereas  they  were  mainly  concerned 
about  the  winning  of  the  next  vacant  office  or  parliamen- 
tary seat.  The  Mr.  Tapers  and  the  Mr.  Tadpoles  and 
the  worse  Mr.  Rigbys,  who  live  on  the  corpse  of  West- 
minster as  lice  live  on  their  parent — Disraeli  has  made 
them  classic  figures  in  literature,  though  it  would  have 
been  better  if  he  had  succeeded  in  making  them  obsolete 
in  real  life.  They  were  the  toadies  who  sat  round  the 
dinner  tables  of  wealthy  political  peers  and  haunted  the 
boudoirs  of  Lady  St.  Julians  and  Lady  X,  Y,  or  Z,  who 
took  up  politics  instead  of  cards  or  the  fine  arts.  Those 
were  the  good  old  days,  "when  there  were  only  ten  men 
in  the  House  of  Commons  who  were  not  either  members 
of  Brooks's  or  this  place."  They  were  the  days  when 
"the  twelve-hundred-a-yearers"  were  the  men  who  took 
politics  seriously:  "These  numerous  statesmen  who  be- 
lieve the  country  must  be  saved  if  they  receive  twelve 
hundred  a  year.  It  is  a  peculiar  class,  that;  £1,200  per 
annum,  paid  quarterly,  is  their  idea  of  political  science 
and  human  nature.  To  receive  £1,200  per  annum  is 
government;  to  wish  to  receive  £1,200  per  annum  is  am- 
bition." Their  ideal  of  life  was  drawing  a  large  salary 
without   surrendering   the   privileges   of  their   class   and 


224    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

their  patrons.  It  was  a  gigantic  game  of  bluffing  the 
nation.  "  'I  am  all  for  a  religious  cry,'  said  Taper.  'It 
means  nothing,  and,  if  successful,  does  not  interfere  with 
business  when  we  are  in.'  "  They  did  not  possess  brains, 
except  of  that  peculiarly  disagreeable  sort  that  is  suc- 
cessful in  back-stair  intrigue.  Mr.  Taper's  "political 
reading  was  confined  to  an  intimate  acquaintance  with 
the  Red  Book  and  Beatson's  Political  Index,  which  he 
could  repeat  backwards."  Tadpole  "was  to  succeed  by 
the  aid  of  the  Wesleyans,  of  which  pious  body  he  had 
suddenly  become  a  fervent  admirer."  While  Mr.  Rigby 
was  "a  man  who  neither  felt  nor  thought,  but  who  pos- 
sessed, in  a  very  remarkable  degree,  a  restless  instinct 
for  adroit  baseness."  And  Lord  Monmouth  summed 
them  all  up  in  expressing  his  own  great  ambitions:  "I 
see  no  means  by  which  I  can  attain  my  object  but  by 
supporting  Peel.  After  all,  what  is  the  end  of  all  parties 
and  all  politics?  To  gain  your  object.  I  want  to  turn 
our  coronet  into  a  ducal  one." 

So  it  goes  on.  Disraeli  holds  them  up  to  the  public 
gaze,  one  by  one — and  most  of  them  were  drawn  from 
life,  remember — and  then  shakes  the  sawdust  out  of 
these  dummy  figures  that  pretended  they  were  statesmen. 
This  great  Reform  Bill  tumult  itself,  which  set  all  their 
tongues  chattering  in  Coningsby :  "  'It  appears  to  me  to 
be  in  a  nutshell,'  said  Lucian  Gay,  'one  party  wishes  to 
keep  their  old  boroughs,  and  the  other  to  get  their  new 
peers.'  " 

Of  course,  it  has  been  said  that  all  this  is  only  dainty 
cynicism;  that  Disraeli  had  resolved  to  make  his  reputa- 
tion by  a  sharp,  bitter  tongue;  that  we  must  not  take  him 
seriously.    The  accusation  is  dead  against  the  facts.    Dis- 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  225 

raeli  was  a  mass  of  sympathetic  emotions  and  sentimental 
passions,  and  not  a  cynic  at  all.     All  his  cutting  phrases 
about  the  politicians  were  not  cynicism— they  were  simple 
truth.     It  was  the  politicians  who  started  this  rumour  of 
cynicism,   and  have  bluffed  the  public  into  believing  it. 
On  the  contrary,  Disraeli  was  the  victim  of  every  simple- 
hearted,  honest  creature  who  strolled  across  his  pages. 
The  tenderest  lines  in  Coningsby  are  for  Flora,  who  was 
too  shy  to  succeed  in  life  except  as  a  gentle-hearted  girl 
who  was  afraid  to  show  her  love — not  likely  to  be  the 
favourite  of  the  true  cynic.     Then  there  are  those  "two 
young  French  ladies  in  their  bonnets,  whom  he  soon  dis- 
covered to  be  actresses."     They  are  most  illuminating  on 
their  creator's  mind;  for  they  clearly  delighted  Disraeli 
as  much  as  they  did  Coningsby,  who  found  them  brighten- 
ing the  last  days  of  his  bored  grandfather.     "They  had 
the  finest  spirits  in  the  world,  imperturbable  good  temper, 
and  an  unconscious  practical  philosophy  that  defied  the 
devil   Care   and   all   his  work."      Lord   Monmouth   had 
engaged  their  services  because  he  was  weary  of  orthodox 
society,  and  asked  for  "persons  who  had  not  been  edu- 
cated in  the   idolatry  of   Respectability."      And   he   got 
the  best  value  for  his  expenditure :    "Clotilde  and  Ermen- 
garde  had  wits  as  sparkling  as  their  eyes,"  and  how  could 
one  give  higher  praise  to  the  latter,  "who  was  so  good- 
natured  that  she  sacrificed  even  her  lovers  to  her  friends." 
They   were   no   mean   schemers   these,   trying,    like    Mr. 
Rigby,  to  keep  all  his  lordship's  money  for  themselves; 
indeed,  they  did  their  best  to  persuade  him  to  forgive 
Coningsby,  which  would  have  saved  that  young  gentle- 
man an  odd  million  or  so.     One  feels  certain  that  these 
are  the  people  that  Disraeli  really  appreciated  and  en- 


226    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

joyed,  as  he  liked  Caroline  and  Julia,  the  mill-girls  in 
Sybil.  No  doubt  he  was  stately  and  courteous  to  the  fine 
society  dames  when  he  moved  in  political  circles;  but  in 
his  books  they  had  to  listen  to  many  home-truths,  and 
found  themselves  often  waiting  until  their  brilliant  cre- 
ator had  spoken  many  affectionate  phrases  with  their 
social  inferiors. 

What  was  Disraeli's  historical  explanation  of  this  crew 
of  sham  statesmen  who  were  misgoverning  and  plunder- 
ing England?  He  said  the  aristocrats  were  a  collection 
of  nobles  who  had  made  themselves  rich  by  robbing  the 
Church  of  its  lands  at  the  Reformation;  who  (when  they 
were  well  established  in  power  after  an  odd  hundred 
years'  practice  under  the  Tudors  and  the  Stuarts)  finally 
took  over  the  power  of  the  Crown  itself  by  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1688.  Since  which  time,  to  the  days  of  Disraeli 
himself,  England  had  been  ruled  by  an  oligarchy  of 
selfish  nobles,  who  had  made  the  Houses  of  Parliament 
into  instruments  of  tyranny  over  the  people  of  England, 
and  had  ejected  the  Stuarts  mainly  because  they  stood  in 
the  way  of  aristocratic  despotism  over  the  democracy. 
The  struggles  of  the  days  of  Walpole,  Chatham,  Bute, 
North  and  the  Younger  Pitt  had  been  the  clever  man- 
oeuvring of  the  nobles  to  maintain  themselves  in  power; 
while,  according  to  Disraeli,  Bolingbroke  and  a  few 
others  had  tried  to  restore  the  traditions  of  an  earlier 
social  system  where  a  stronger  Monarchy,  with  a  living 
Church,  protected  the  people  from  the  undue  oppression 
of  the  aristocrats  and  the  plutocrats.  Disraeli's  charge 
against  the  oligarchy  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  that 
it  was  base  in  origin  and  base  in  policy.  He  said  the  old 
aristocracy  practically  disappeared  with  the  Wars  of  the 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  227 

Roses;  that  the  English  peerage  of  his  day  was  an  ille- 
gitimate growth  from  "three  sources:  the  spoliation  of 
the  Church;  the  open  and  flagrant  sale  of  its  honours 
by  the  elder  Stuarts;  and  the  boroughmongering  of  our 
own  times." 

His  contempt  for  this  sham  nobility  was  one  of  the 
passions  of  Disraeli's  life.  "I  never  heard  of  a  peer  with 
an  ancient  lineage.  The  real  old  families  of  this  country 
are  to  be  found  among  the  peasantry;  the  gentry,  too, 
may  lay  some  claim  to  old  blood."  As  for  these  new 
peers:  "They  adopted  Norman  manners  while  they 
usurped  Norman  titles.  They  have  neither  the  right  of 
the  Norman,  nor  did  they  fulfil  the  duty  of  the  Norman: 
they  did  not  conquer  the  land,  and  they  do  not  defend  it." 
Some  people  may  think  that  Disraeli  made  a  great  deal 
too  much  fuss  about  the  aristocrats,  legitimate  or  illegiti- 
mate; but  his  point  of  view  must  be  appreciated,  for  they 
are  a  fundamental  part  of  his  ideal  society.  When  he 
cried  down  the  sham  aristocrats,  he  was  not  speaking  as 
a  disciple  of  the  modern  democratic  theory  that  the  people 
can  best  govern  themselves.  He  believed  no  such  thing. 
He  was  convinced  that  government  must  come  from 
above;  and  that  if  the  people  wanted  good  government 
they  must  put  the  power  into  the  hands  of  the  right  gov- 
ernors. He  was  not  a  modern  European;  we  must 
remember  that  he  was  an  Asiatic,  to  whom  modern 
progress  was  an  object  of  the  gravest  suspicion.  Disraeli 
believed  in  Race  (as  he  believed  in  few  things  else  but 
liberty  and  the  good  taste  that  made  a  man  an  artist)  ; 
and  by  race  he  was  an  Oriental,  and  therefore  conceived 
of  society  as  a  body  in  which  the  democracy  was  bal- 
anced with  an  autocracy,  in  a  manner  which  is  almost 


228    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

inconceivable  in  modern  Europe,  but  which  was  an  accom- 
plished fact  in  earlier  periods  even  here.  But  this  raises 
the  whole  question  of  Disraeli's  conception  of  our  na- 
tional history.  It  is  a  most  essential  part  of  this  man, 
and  until  it  is  understood,  if  not  accepted,  this  statesman 
must  be  a  complete  enigma.  Being  a  great  man  he  will 
always — after  the  fullest  explanations — remain  a  mys- 
tery. 

Disraeli,  in  his  novels,  and  especially  in  Coningsby  and 
Sybil,  has  given  us  an  outline  of  English  history.  It  is  a 
little  humiliating  that  we  have  had  to  await  the  arrival 
of  an  alien  from  the  East  to  tell  us  the  true  history  of  our 
own  race.  For  that  is  not  far  from  the  truth.  The 
sketch  of  English  history  thrown  off  by  this  novelist  in 
the  light  form  of  a  tale  for  our  leisure  moments  is  per- 
haps the  most  brilliant,  and,  better  still,  the  truest  analysis 
of  the  national  development  in  print.  Many  historians 
have  given  us  more  facts;  none  have  drawn  such  logical 
conclusions  from  the  evidence.  There  is  a  strange  con- 
fidence in  the  public  mind  that,  because  a  man  has  spent 
a  life  in  examining  documents  and  records,  therefore  he 
Is  the  best  qualified  to  pass  judgment  on  the  evidence 
collected.  One  might  as  reasonably  expect  the  young 
ladies  who  collect  the  money  at  tea-shop  doors  to  be  the 
safest  judges  of  the  best  way  to  invest  and  administer  the 
receipts.  The  evidence  is  as  urgently  necessary  as  the 
cash  if  we  are  to  get  any  satisfactory  results;  but  the 
role  of  investigator  and  cashier  is  not  the  best  qualifica- 
tion for  being  a  philosopher  in  history  or  a  genius  in 
finance. 

It  would  be  ridiculous  to  claim  for  Disraeli  that  he  was 
a  professional  historian;  but  it  would  be  just  as  difficult 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  229 

to  show  that  on  any  important  point  he  was  wrong  in  his 
facts  or  illogical  in  his  conclusions.  He  had  many  ad- 
vantages. He  had,  first,  the  supreme  advantage  of 
starting  his  study  of  English  history  with  the  blank 
mind  of  an  Oriental,  by  whom  our  history  had  not  been 
unconsciously  digested  as  a  superstition  before  it  was 
consciously  considered  as  a  fact.  It  is  the  theory  of  our 
great  jury  system  that  the  jurors  should  know  nothing 
of  the  events  until  they  are  told  them  in  court.  Regard- 
ing English  history,  Benjamin  Disraeli  racially  satisfied 
these  principles.  He  came  to  the  study  with  a  clear  mind. 
Then,  again,  he  escaped  the  still  more  serious  limitations 
of  an  education  at  a  public  school  and  a  university. 
These  are  admirable  institutions  for  turning  out  men 
of  uprightness  and  gentlemen,  but  their  wildest  ad- 
mirers would  not  claim  that  they  have  a  standard  of 
intellect  which  is  equal  to  their  standard  of  honour.  In 
these  institutions  it  is  assumed  that  certain  historical 
dogmas  and  creeds  are  beyond  discussion;  just  as  the 
clergy  start  by  accepting  the  XXXIX  Articles  and  the 
Apostles'  Creed.  Just  as  the  Churchman  believes  in 
God  the  Father  and  his  Son,  so  the  Eton  master  and  the 
Oxford  don  believe  in  William  Pitt  and  his  son,  and  in 
the  dozens  of  political  saints  that  are  adored  by  the  fol- 
lowers of  that  faith.  At  Harrow  and  Cambridge  it  is 
assumed  that  EngHsh  history  is  the  story  of  a  continual 
progress  from  barbaric  Saxons  to  imperial  Britons.  It 
begins  with  a  simple-minded  Alfred  the  Great,  who,  poor 
fellow,  did  his  little  best  (being  without  tanks  or  machine- 
guns  or  aeroplanes)  ;  and  it  has  now  culminated  in  a 
glorious  apocalypse  of  an  "all  red"  route  round  the  world 
and  an  Empire  on  which  the  sun  never  sets.     At  every 


230    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

British  public  school,  high  and  low,  it  is  assumed  that 
the  transition  from  St.  Anselm  as  the  King's  adviser  to 
Sir  Robert  Peel  as  Prime  Minister  of  the  Manchester 
School  spells  Progress  and  Development. 

DisraeH  accepted  none  of  the  myths  of  English  his- 
tory. He  was  an  original  thinker,  and  did  not  copy  the 
opinions  of  his  predecessors,  as  most  of  the  students  who 
work  at  the  universities  do.  Do  not  let  anyone  be  un- 
grateful for  their  patient  search  after  the  facts,  where 
they  are  invaluable.  But  when  it  comes  to  deduction 
from  their  facts,  it  is  clear  that  they  are  venturing  be- 
yond their  intellectual  depth.  Fortunately  for  Disraeli, 
there  seems  to  have  been  nothing  too  deep  for  him;  it  is 
one  of  the  advantages  of  genius. 

He  refused  to  accept  the  principles  of  Progress  laid 
down  in  the  sixth  form  at  Eton.  He  clung  to  the  Past 
rather  than  plunge  recklessly  into  the  Future;  he  had 
just  a  touch  of  contempt  for  Stephen  Morley  (in  Sybil), 
who  "wishes  to  create  the  future."  Disraeli,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  had  a  profound  conviction  that  it  was  impossible 
to  break  with  the  traditions  of  the  Past;  we  can  only,  he 
said,  slowly  develop  them,  without  any  sudden  rupture. 
Strangely  enough,  it  is  only  Eton  and  Oxford  that  really 
believe  in  the  ideals  of  the  nouveaux  riches.  Disraeli 
maintained  that  the  modern  historians  were  in  grievous 
error  in  their  reading  of  our  national  history,  and  he  had 
a  real  respect  for  historical  accuracy:  he  was  the  living 
image  of  his  own  creation,  Mr.  Hatton,  "who  had  ac- 
quired, from  his  severe  habits  of  historical  research,  a 
respect  only  for  what  was  authentic."  When  modern 
historians  and  newspaper  writers  "statistically  proved 
that  the  general  condition  of  the  people  was  much  better 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  231 

at  that  moment  than  it  had  been  at  any  known  period  of 
history,"  Disraeli  puts  into  the  mouth  of  old  Gerard, 
the  real  hero  of  Sybil,  the  answer:  "Ah!  yes,  I  know 
that  style  of  speculation,  your  gentleman  who  reminds 
us  that  a  working  man  now  has  a  pair  of  cotton  stockings, 
and  that  Henry  the  Eighth  himself  was  not  so  well  off. 
...  I  deny  the  premises;  I  deny  that  the  condition  of 
the  main  body  is  better  now  than  at  any  period  of  our 
history;  that  it  is  as  good  as  it  has  been  at  several.  I 
say,  for  instance,  the  people  were  better  clothed,  better 
lodged,  and  better  fed  just  before  the  War  of  the  Roses 
than  at  this  moment.  .  .  .  Look  at  the  average  term  of 
life.  ...  In  this  district,  among  the  working  classes,  it 
is  seventeen."  To  which  Egremont  replies:  "In  old 
days  they  had  terrible  pestilences."  "But  they  touched 
all  alike,"  said  Gerard.  "We  have  more  pestilence  now 
in  England  than  we  ever  had,  but  it  only  reaches  the 
poor." 

Disraeli  read  English  history,  and  it  convinced  him 
that  the  democracy  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  of  the  Stuart 
times  even,  possessed  a  larger  share  of  the  nation's 
wealth  and  happiness  than  the  people  held  in  the  days 
of  modern  "Progress."  He  admitted  that  there  was 
enormous  wealth  in  modern  England;  but  he  pointed  out, 
first,  that  it  was  out  of  all  proportion  in  the  hands  of  a 
few  members  of  the  community;  and,  secondly,  that  mod- 
ern wealth  did  not  necessarily  mean  health  and  happi- 
ness, but,  on  the  contrary,  resulted  in  sheer  stupidity  and 
vulgar  trivialities.  Disraeli's  opinion  on  the  first  point 
was  formed  after  a  tour  through  industrial  England 
which  he  made  (in  1844)  with  a  few  of  his  friends. 
He  told  the  tale  (softened,  he  said,  to  make  it  bearable 


232    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

for  the  public  nerves)  in  Sybil.  It  is  the  usual  ghastly 
tale  that  has  been  repeated  a  hundred  thousand  times 
since  by  every  street-corner  Socialist  and  by  everyone 
who  is  sufficiently  well  educated  to  know  the  facts — and, 
to  tell  the  truth,  the  public  nerves  have  stood  it  with  the 
robust  vigour  of  a  butcher  trained  in  the  slaughter- 
house. This  is  not  the  place  to  repeat  the  evidence;  two 
or  three  sentences  from  Sybil  are  sufficient  to  show  the 
line  of  the  argument:  "Naked  to  the  waist,  an  iron 
chain  fastened  to  a  belt  of  leather  runs  between  their 
legs  clad  in  canvas  trousers,  while  on  hands  and  feet  an 
English  girl,  for  twelve,  sometimes  for  sixteen  hours  a 
day,  hauls  and  hurries  tubs  of  coal  up  subterranean  roads, 
dark,  precipitous  and  plashy;  circumstances  that  seem  to 
have  escaped  the  notice  of  the  Society  for  the  Abolition 
of  Negro  Slavery.  These  worthy  gentlemen,  too,  appear 
to  have  been  singularly  unconscious  of  the  sufferings  of 
the  little  trappers,  which  was  remarkable,  as  many  of 
them  were  in  their  own  employ.  .  .  .  Infants  of  four 
and  five  years  of  age.  .  .  .  Their  labour,  indeed,  is  not 
severe,  for  that  would  be  impossible,  but  it  is  passed  in 
darkness  and  solitude,  .  .  .  Hour  after  hour  passes,  and 
all  that  reminds  the  Infant  trappers  of  the  world  they 
have  quitted  and  that  which  they  have  joined  is  the  pas- 
sage of  the  coal  waggons.  .  .  ."  And  this  was  modern 
progress,  the  age  of  great  industry  and  greater  wealth. 
Inconceivable  though  it  may  appear,  Disraeli  refused  to 
accept  it  with  the  favour  or  enthusiasm  with  which  it  was 
welcomed  by  the  majority  of  the  historians  and  econ- 
omists of  the  age.  He  had  carefully  examined  the 
civilization  of  Western  Europe,  and  it  failed  to  interest 
him — indeed,  it  revolted  him. 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  233 

He  turned  for  mental  relief  to  an  age  when  there  were 
monasteries  instead  of  factories,  and  abbots  and  gentle- 
men instead  of  bankers  and  manufacturers  and  a  sham 
nobility.     "If  we  must  have  an  aristocracy,  I  would  rather 
that  its  younger  branches  should  be  monks  and  nuns  than 
colonels    without    regiments,    or    housekeepers    of    royal 
palaces  that  exist  only  in  name.     Besides,  see  what  an 
advantage   to   a   minister   if  the  unendowed   aristocracy 
were  thus  provided  for  now.     He  need  not,  like  a  min- 
ister in  these  days,  intrust  the  conduct  of  public  affairs 
to   individuals   notoriously   incompetent,    appoint    to    the 
command  of  expeditions  generals  who  never  saw  a  field, 
make  governors  of  colonies  out  of  men  who  never  could 
govern  themselves,  or  find  an  ambassador  in  a  broken 
dandy  or  a  blasted  favourite."     He  recalled  the  beauty 
of  the  old  land:     "In  England  and  Wales  alone  there 
were  of  these  institutions  of  different  sizes,  I  mean  mon- 
asteries, and  chantries  and  chapels,  and  great  hospitals, 
considerably  upwards  of  three  thousand;  all  of  them  fair 
buildings,  many  of  them  of  exquisite  beauty  .   .   .   estab- 
lishments that  were  as  vast  and  as  magnificent  and  as 
beautiful  as  your  Belvoirs  and  your  Chatsworths,  your 
Wentworths   and   your   Stowes.   .   .   .  The    monks    were 
never  non-resident.    They  expended  their  revenue  among 
those   whose   labours   had  produced   it  .   .   .  they   made 
the   country   beautiful,    and   the   people   proud   of  their 
country." 

Disraeli's  claim  that  the  monks  were  the  protectors  and 
trustees  of  the  people's  wealth,  rather  than  of  the  self- 
interest  of  the  Church,  naturally  roused  the  question  why 
the  people  had  not  risen  to  save  the  monasteries  from 
the  robbers  of  the  Reformation.    The  answer  is:    "They 


234    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

did,  but  too  late.  They  struggled  for  a  century,  but  they 
struggled  against  property,  and  they  were  beat."  Since 
the  Reformation,  the  history  of  England  in  Disraeli's 
judgment  was  the  story  of  how  these  thieves  of  the 
Church's  wealth  had  gradually  collected  into  their  hands 
almost  all  the  possessions  and  all  the  governing  power 
of  the  nation,  and  had  dispossessed  the  people  of  both. 
The  story  finishes  with  a  bitter  thrust  worthy  of  this 
master  with  the  rapier:  "I  don't  know  whether  the  union 
workhouses  will  remove  it.  They  are  building  something 
for  the  people  at  last.  After  an  experiment  of  three  cen- 
turies, your  gaols  being  full  and  your  treadmills  losing 
something  of  their  virtue,  you  have  given  us  a  substitute 
for  the  monasteries."  The  men  who  were  there  in  the 
place  of  the  communal  monks  Disraeli  regarded  as  the 
greatest  curse  of  England.  They  had  divided  their  coun- 
try into  two  classes — "the  Rich  and  the  Poor,"  which 
was  the  sub-title  he  gave  to  the  romance  Sybil.  Whereas 
in  the  old  days  there  had  been  distinct  classes  indeed, 
but  with  a  juster  balance  of  the  duties  and  the  rewards. 
The  nobles  had  their  privileges,  no  doubt,  but  they  had 
their  duties,  and  their  share  of  the  wealth  was  but  a 
fraction  of  the  sum  that  the  modern  masters  have  seized 
at  the  price  of  the  degradation  of  the  people.  There 
were  yeomen  who  owned  their  land  in  the  merrier  Eng- 
land, and  the  people  had  their  common  rights.  Where 
were  these  in  Disraeli's  day?  Helpless  under  the  ruth- 
less hand  of  such  as  the  Earl  de  Mowbray  of  Mowbray 
Castle — this  new  apparition  in  English  society.  He  had 
bought  his  title  and  his  estates  out  of  the  fortune  of  his 
grandfather,  late  waiter  of  a  London  club,  who  had  made 
that  fortune  by  holding  up  the  rice  of  India  until  its  peo- 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  235 

pie  were  starving:  "The  great  forestallcrs  came  to  the 
rescue  of  the  people  over  Avhose  destinies  they  presided; 
and  at  the  same  time  fed,  and  pocketed,  millions."  It 
revolted  Disraeli  that  the  grandson  should  be  one  of  the 
lords  of  England  because  his  grandfather,  John  Warren, 
had  behaved  like  a  knave  in  India. 

Disraeli's  conception  of  democracy  was  essentially 
Eastern;  writing  for  Englishmen,  he  expressed  it  in  terms 
of  our  own  Middle  Ages,  because  that  was  the  nearest 
thing  to  it  he  would  find  in  our  Western  civilization.  He 
believed  in  all  that  fundamental  freedom  which  was  main- 
tained in  the  widespreading  local  government  which  was 
the  basis  of  the  mediaeval  world.  The  historians  have 
been  attracted  unduly  by  the  barons,  forgetting  that  the 
people  then  possessed  rights  which  the  new  plutocrats  of 
to-day  have  crushed  out  under  the  pompous  names  of 
Progress  and  Liberty.  Still,  Disraeli  did  not  imagine 
that  the  people  could  govern  themselves:  "Dismiss  from 
your  mind  these  fallacious  fancies.  The  People  are  not 
strong;  the  People  never  can  be  strong.  Their  attempts 
at  self-vindication  will  end  only  in  their  suffering  and 
confusion."  He  was  writing  in  the  days  of  the  Charter 
struggles,  and,  whatever  one  may  think  of  his  theories,  at 
least  history  so  far  has  sadly  confirmed  them.  We  can 
trace  in  Sybil  how  the  fine  earnestness  of  the  democracy 
was  frittered  away  by  the  ignorance,  the  treachery,  the 
mean  ambitions,  the  endless  conflicts  of  the  leaders  the 
people  had  set  up  to  guide  them.  Sybil  herself  had  been 
all  enthusiasm  for  a  purely  popular  movement — until  it 
was  tried;  and  then:  "I  was  but  a  dreamer  of  dreams: 
I  wake  from  my  hallucinations,  as  others  have  done. 
.  .   .  The  people  are  not  disciplined;  their  actions  will 


236    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

not  be,  cannot  be  coherent."  There  are  possibilities  of 
democratic  movement  that  the  Eastern  mind  could 
scarcely  be  expected  to  grasp — but  who  can  say  that 
Disraeli  was  very  far  wrong  when  he  wrote,  though  it 
may  not  be  so  true  to-day? 

Anyhow,  Disraeli  conceived  of  a  perfect  society  where 
there  would  be  no  idle  fancies  of  equality.     There  was  to 
be  a  Crown  that  would  receive  back  again  much  of  the 
power  that  the  greedy  aristocrats  of  the  Reformation  and 
Hanoverian  times  had  snatched  from  it;  and  this  royal 
power  was  to  be  used  in  the  future  as  Disraeli  claimed, 
with   much   historical   accuracy,    as   it   had   been  used   in 
the   past — to  protect  the  people   of  England   from   the 
tyranny  of  the  wealthy.     He  claimed,  and  again  there  is 
vast   historical   evidence   behind   his    assertion,    that  the 
Stuart  Charles  was  a  martyr  in  this  cause.     Then,  the 
Church  was  once  more  to  be  made  an  independent  force 
in  national  affairs,  and  was  no  longer  to  be  the  tool  of 
the  governing  clique,  with  its  bishops  the  nominees  of  a 
Minister  of  State.     And  the  foundation  of  all  was  to  be 
the  People,  for  whose  good  the  Crown  and  the  Church 
were  but  a  means  to  an  end.     "In  the  selfish  strife  of 
factions,  two  great  existences  have  been  blotted  out  of 
the  history  of  England — the  Monarch  and  the  Multitude; 
as  the  power  of  the  Crown  has  diminished,  the  privileges 
of  the  People  have  disappeared,  till  at  length  the  sceptre 
has  become  a  pageant,  and  its  subject  has  again  degen- 
erated into  a  serf.   .   .   .  There  is  a  whisper  arising  in  this 
country  that  Loyalty  is  not  a  phrase,  Faith  not  a  delusion, 
and  Popular  Liberty  something  more  diffusive  and  sub- 
stantial than  the  profane  exercise  of  the  sacred  rights  of 
sovereignty  by  political  classes."    The  one  class  for  whom 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  237 

there  was  no  room  in  Disraeli's  Commonwealth  was  the 
class  of  the  Idle  and  vulgar  rich. 

But   beneath   all   Disraeli's   writings   there   is   a    deep 
undertone  of  a  creed  that  is  far  wider,  far  greater,  than 
anything  that  he  expressed  as  a  political  dogma.     The 
remedy  for  the  troubles  of  modern  society  could  not  be 
put  into  the  form  of  a  parliamentary  Bill,  or  a  thousand 
of  them.     We  began  by  saying  that  Disraeli  was  a  poet. 
By  an  unlucky  fate  he  became  a  politician,  and  much  of 
what  he  saw  was  expressed  in  terms  of  politics.     But  it 
seems  quite  clear  that  this  was  not  the  ultimate  thought 
in  his  mind.     He  wrote  of  politics  in  his  novels  for  much 
the  same  reason  that  he  put  his  political  ideas  into  roman- 
tic form — in  order  that  it  might  catch  the  ears  of  a  public 
not  too  finely  tuned  to  the  higher  notes  of  the  universe. 
Being  a  wit  and  a  dandy  and  a  fashionable  man  about 
Town,   he  thought  it  might  seem  affected  if  it  became 
known  that  Mr.  Disraeli  was  convinced  that  what  Eng- 
land wanted  was  a  change  of  soul,  and  not  a  change  of 
political  parties  or  even  the  restoration  of  the  Monarchy. 
But  that  was  the  actual  truth.     He  had  much  more  in 
common  with  the  revivalist  preacher  than  with  most  other 
fanatics.     He  thought  England  would  not  recover  until 
she  had  a  moral  revival.     "Their   Charter  is  a  coarse 
specific  for  our  social  evils.     The  spirit  that  would  cure 
our  ills  must  be  of  a  deeper  and  finer  mood,"  he  wrote. 

His  moral  change  of  heart  would  have  considerably 
startled  the  revivalist  preacher  to  whom  he  has  just  been 
rashly  compared;  not  because  Disraeli  was  in  the  least 
insincere  in  his  call  for  the  higher  morality,  but  just 
because  the  professional  revivalists  are  sometimes  a  little 
narrow  in  their  conceptions,  while  this  statesman  had  all 


238    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

the  fickle  fancies  of  the  amateur.  There  are  many  sen- 
tences in  Disraeli's  confession  of  faith  that  must  have 
made  the  orthodox  enthusiasts  very  hopeful  at  the  first 
glance.  "Unless  we  bring  man  nearer  to  heaven,  unless 
government  become  again  divine,  the  insignificance  of  the 
human  scheme  must  paralyse  all  effort."  Except  that  it  is 
better  literature,  that  might  pass  inspection  in  a  village 
conventicle.  Again,  another  sentence  from  Tancred 
aroused  hope :  "I  would  lift  up  my  voice  to  heaven,  and 
ask,  What  is  Duty,  and  what  is  Faith?  What  ought  I 
to  do,  and  what  ought  I  to  believe?"  It  is  true  there  is 
the  undertone  of  restless  scepticism  in  the  inquiry;  but  it 
certainly  showed  desire  for  spiritual  truth  if  it  could  be 
found.  Let  no  one  imagine  that  Disraeli  was  anything 
but  entirely  sincere  when  he  touched  on  religion.  He 
was  desperately  in  earnest,  without  a  shadow  of  doubt, 
and  this  spirit  lay  very  closely  below  the  surface  of  all 
he  wrote.  His  passionate  sarcasm  can  generally  be  traced 
very  quickly  to  a  fierce  moral  conviction.  He  really 
meant  what  he  said  when  he  called  for  a  great  change  of 
heart. 

Yet  it  was  not  the  change  the  revivalists  contemplated. 
If  they  had  been  referred  to  Disraeli's  chief  book  on 
religion,  namely,  Tancred,  or  the  New  Crusade,  they 
must  have  been  in  some  degree  startled  to  note  that  the 
first  chapter  is  an  exceedingly  charming  and  dainty  dis- 
quisition on  French  cookery  and  French  cooks.  If  the 
delights  of  the  flesh  are  sinful,  then  these  artists  of  the 
kitchen  were  not,  surely,  on  the  direct  road  to  Paradise. 
For  their  little  world  had  worldly  aims.  "  'It  is  some- 
thing to  have  served  under  Napoleon,'  added  Prevost, 
with  the  grand  air  of  the  Imperial  kitchen.     'Had  it  not 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  239 

been  for  Waterloo  I  should  have  had  the  cross.  But  the 
Bourbons  and  the  cooks  of  the  Empire  never  could  under- 
stand each  other.  .  .  .  When  Monsieur  passed  my  soup 
of  Austerlitz  untasted,  I  knew  the  old  family  was 
doomed.'  "  They  may  have  been  as  sincere  as  the  re- 
vivalists, but  it  is  patent  that  they  were  seeking  different 
crosses.  Perhaps  it  will  be  better  to  cease  using,  in 
connection  with  Disraeli's  faith,  that  much  confusing 
word  "religion."  It  is  usually  held  to  connote  some 
kind  of  dogmatic  belief  that  priests  can  put  into  a  creed 
and  theologians  can  debate  in  class-rooms  with  their 
ecclesiastical  pupils.  There  is  singularly  little  of  creed 
or  theology,  in  the  limited  sense,  in  anything  Disraeli  has 
to  say  on  religion.  His  moral  convictions  are  much 
nearer  akin  to  the  language  of  the  poets  and  the  wit  of 
the  wisest  men  of  the  world;  and  a  great  deal  of  it  is 
expressed  with  the  flavour  of  aggressive  sarcasm  which 
certainly  does  not  remind  one  of  the  primitive  Christian 
faith. 

That  amazing  portrait  of  the  bishop  in  Tancred  gives 
many  hints  of  what  Disraeli  meant  by  religion.  The 
Duke  of  Bellamont  desired  his  son  to  go  into  Parliament, 
whereas  the  young  gentleman  on  coming  of  age  expressed 
a  desire  to  worship  at  the  holy  tomb  in  Palestine.  He 
was  disgusted  with  politics,  even  before  he  entered 
political  life.  He  first  demanded  a  faith  and  a  conviction 
of  duty.  The  Duchess,  his  mother,  was  surely  reasonable 
in  thinking  that  if  anyone  could  supply  such  desirable 
convictions  it  must  be  her  favourite  bishop.  His  utter 
failure  to  do  so  is  a  concise  summary  of  Disraeli's  meas- 
urement of  orthodox  Christianity.  His  sketch  of  the 
bishop  is  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  English  literature. 


240    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

The  Duchess  had  already  told  us  that  he  was  "a  great 
statesman  as  well  as  the  first  theologian  of  the  age." 
He  had  sprung  into  early  fame  by  proclaiming  that 
Ireland  was  on  the  point  of  shaking  herself  free  from 
the  Church  of  Rome  and  coming  into  the  Protestant  fold: 
a  declaration  by  which  that  earnest  Protestant,  the 
Duchess  of  Bellamont,  "instantly  recognized  the  man  of 
God."  Strangely  enough,  she  continued  to  believe  in  his 
prophetic  insight,  notwithstanding  that  "the  impending 
second  Reformation  did  chance  to  take  the  untoward 
form  of  the  emancipation  of  the  Roman  Catholics,  fol- 
lowed in  due  season  by  the  destruction  of  Protestant 
bishoprics,  the  sequestration  of  Protestant  tithes,  and  the 
endowment  of  Maynooth."  And  then  Disraeli  tells  us 
why  this  bishop  had  become  the  most  famous  in  the  land. 
"He  combined  a  great  talent  for  action  with  very 
limited  powers  of  thought  .  .  .  stimulated  by  an  ambi- 
tion that  knew  no  repose,  and  with  a  capacity  for  master- 
ing details.  .  .  .  He  was  one  of  those  leaders  who  are 
not  guides.  .  .  .  The  bustling  intermeddler  was  unable 
to  supply  society  with  a  single  solution.  .  .  .  All  his 
quandaries  terminated  in  the  same  catastrophe — a  com- 
promise. Abstract  principles  with  him  ever  ended  in 
concrete  expediency.  .  .  .  The  bishop,  always  ready, 
had  in  the  course  of  his  episcopal  career  placed  himself 
at  the  head  of  every  movement  in  the  Church  which 
others  had  originated,  and  had  as  regularly  withdrawn 
at  the  right  moment,  when  the  heat  was  over,  or  had 
become,  on  the  contrary,  excessive."  It  was  to  such  a 
man  that  Tancred  was  sent  in  his  spiritual  difficulties. 
The  interview  was  mutually  unsatisfactory.  The  bishop, 
having  neither  fixed  principles  nor  a  sincere  faith,  quickly 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  241 

tied  himself  into  an  undignified  knot:  "he  was  lost  in  a 
maze  of  phrases,  and  afforded  his  pupil  not  a  single 
fact."  Tancred  appeals  to  him  to  say  how  society  may 
be  governed  by  God  rather  than  by  man.  All  the  bishop 
can  point  out  is  his  great  hope  that  there  will  soon  be  a 
bishop  in  Manchester.  "But  I  want  to  see  an  angel  at 
Manchester,"  insists  Tancred — and  the  interview  obvi- 
ously cannot  continue. 

It  is  little  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  bishop  could  not 
satisfy  Tancred  (or  Disraeli)  out  of  the  wisdom  of  his 
palace  library:  for  neither  wanted  a  theology.  After 
reading  what  Disraeli  had  to  plead  for  religion,  one  has 
the  impression  that  he  would  not  have  made  many  in- 
quiries concerning  a  man's  creed  when  he  was  once  satis- 
fied that  he  loved  the  beautiful  and  possessed  all  that 
varied  collection  of  virtues  which  one  sums  up  as  an 
honest  heart.  He  probably  never  drew  any  character  he 
respected  more  than  Walter  Gerard,  who  died  for  his 
convictions  that  England  should  again  be  made  a  place 
of  beauty  instead  of  a  refuse-heap  at  the  mouth  of  a 
coal-pit — he  was,  in  short,  an  artist  and  a  man  of  reason. 
Perhaps,  if  the  whole  were  known,  it  may  be  that  Disraeli 
would  rather  have  had  a  man  gifted  with  a  sense  of 
beauty  than  with  a  gift  of  complete  truthfulness.  It  may 
be  that  his  love  for  the  truth  grew  rather  from  his  artistic 
sense  than  from  his  moral  convictions.  After  all,  the 
artist's  mind  is  the  realist's  mind — quite  contrary  to  the 
common  opinion  that  would  call  him  a  sentimentalist. 
The  eye  of  the  artist  sees  more  acutely  and  accurately 
than  the  eye  of  the  average  man.  Now,  to  see  accurately 
is  to  see  the  truth,  and  to  realize  the  truth  is  to  know  that 
dishonesty  is  a  clumsy  thing  that  does  not  pay  in  the  long 


242     MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

run.  Disraeli  wanted  men  to  be  honest  and  just  with  each 
other  because  he  had  so  keen  an  eye  that  it  told  him  that 
England  (and  other  places)  was  miserable  because  it  was 
ruled  by  men  who  were  selfish  or  dishonest  or  stupid,  or 
all  three.  He  called  for  a  "New  Crusade"  that  would 
give  them  great  ideals,  moral  convictions,  and  a  deter- 
mination to  be  cultured  people  before  they  were  million- 
aires or  any  other  sort  of  worldly  success.  He  may  have 
called  his  creed  Christianity,  but  it  was  something  which 
can  be  found  in  all  the  creeds,  whether  they  be  of  pagans 
or  Christians,  or  of  poet  or  priest. 

It  was  a  sportive  chance  that  threw  Disraeli  on  the 
shores  of  England;  he  could  scarcely  have  been  more  out 
of  place  if  Fate  had  carried  him  a  little  further  north  and 
landed  him  at  the  Pole.  Every  fibre  of  him  had  the  love 
of  warmth  and  colour.  It  is  clear  from  a  thousand  pas- 
sages in  his  books  that  his  ideals  were  those  of  the  pagan. 
The  more  emotional  of  his  readers  will  think  of  Tancred 
as  the  hero  who  went  to  the  East  to  worship  at  the  tomb 
of  his  Saviour;  but  the  more  studiously  minded  will  re- 
member that  on  the  last  page  we  find  him  at  the  feet  of 
Eva,  He  went  to  seek  a  Faith;  is  it  quite  by  chance  that 
he  found  a  woman  who  "presented  the  perfection  of 
Oriental  beauty,  such  as  It  existed  in  Eden?"  Disraeli's 
religion  was  very  real  and  true,  without  doubt,  but  his 
paganism  was  the  deeper  note.  His  ancestors  had  been 
nomads  of  the  desert  before  they  found  the  One  God; 
and  Disraeli  was  a  mysterious  survival  of  the  past  in  a 
modern  world,  where  he  was  always  rebellious  and  ill 
at  ease. 

This  strange  being  who  aspired  to  rule  (and  did  rule) 
England  had  the  utmost  contempt  for  our  whole  civiliza- 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  243 

tion — which  was  only  natural,  since  he  was  a  pagan. 
What  is  unnatural  is  that  he  should  ever  have  desired  to 
rule  us  and  that  he  should  have  succeeded.  When  he 
was  in  his  twenty-fourth  year  or  so,  he  published  a  little 
book,  Popanilla,  in  which  he  told  us  exactly  what  he 
thought  of  us  and  our  whole  social  system.  He  did  not 
think  much  of  it.  There  is  scarcely  a  line  of  it  which 
does  not  express  utter  contempt  for  all  the  things  we 
have  been  so  proud  of  doing  in  the  world.  The  book 
contains  Disraeli's  philosophy  of  life:  it  contains  his  creed 
for  this  world,  as  Tancred  (written  twenty  years  after- 
wards) professes  to  tell  us  more  of  his  creed  for  the 
next;  and  there  is  much  that  is  common  to  both.  Popanilla 
is  one  of  the  most  amazingly  brilliant  social  skits  that 
English  literature  has  produced.  When  the  last  page 
has  been  reached  there  is  not  much  left  of  the  Utilitarians, 
the  Economists,  the  Governing  Set,  and  Modern  Society 
in  general.  This  vast  structure  called  "civilization,"  in- 
stead of  being  an  admirable  thing,  appears  to  be  half  a 
stupid  blunder  and  half  a  crime. 

The  story  begins  on  the  pagan  island  of  Fantaisie, 
where  nothing  much  happens  except  perpetual  summer 
and  continuous  dancing  and  love-making  all  the  delicious 
nights  long.  The  inhabitants  are  an  "innocent  and  a 
happy,  though  a  voluptuous  and  ignorant  race.  They 
have  no  manufactures,  no  commerce,  no  agriculture  and 
no  printing-presses  .  .  .  for  intellectual  amusement  they 
have  a  pregnant  fancy  and  a  ready  wit."  It  is  a  common 
superstition  in  the  West  of  Europe  that  the  acquiring  of 
knowledge  has  been  the  foundation  of  all  our  happiness 
and  prosperity.  Disraeli  turned  the  tables  on  us  and 
showed  how   a   shipwrecked  box   of   books   of  learning 


244    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

almost  brought  moral  and  material  disaster  to  this  idyllic 
island.  The  evil  books  fell  into  the  hands  of  an  unfor- 
tunate islander  who  was  hunting  for  a  lost  lock  of  his 
mistress's  hair.  Had  he  found  it,  all  would  have  been 
well,  perhaps. 

But  instead,  he  read  the  whole  box  of  books,  and  "now 
discovered  with  dismay  that  he  and  his  fellow-islanders 
were  nothing  more  than  a  horde  of  useless  savages."  He 
rushed  to  explain  to  the  king  the  utter  folly  of  being 
merely  happy — it  did  not  pay.  "If  there  were  no  utility 
in  pleasure,  it  was  quite  clear  that  pleasure  could  profit  no 
one.  If,  therefore,  it  were  unprofitable,  it  was  injurious; 
because  that  which  does  not  produce  a  profit  is  equivalent 
to  a  loss;  therefore  pleasure  is  a  losing  business;  conse- 
quently pleasure  is  not  pleasant."  He  showed  the  king 
very  clearly  that  "the  development  of  utility  is  therefore 
the  object  of  our  being,"  and  that  man  is  "a  developing 
animal.  Development  is  the  discovery  of  utility."  They 
must  learn  to  disregard  this  low  pursuit  of  pleasure,  for 
"a  nation  might  be  extremely  happy,  extremely  powerful, 
and  extremely  rich,  although  every  individual  member  of 
it  might  at  the  same  time  be  miserable,  dependent  and  in 
debt."  And  so  this  speech  goes  on  until:  "He  finished 
by  re-urging  in  strong  terms  the  immediate  development 
of  the  island.  In  the  first  place,  a  great  metropolis  must 
be  instantly  built,  because  a  great  metropolis  always  pro- 
duces a  great  demand;  and  moreover,  Popanilla  had  some 
legal  doubts  whether  a  country  without  a  capital  could  in 
fact  be  considered  a  State."  If  they  would  only  apply 
themselves  earnestly  to  developments,  "Popanilla  had 
no  hesitation  in  saying  that  a  short  time  could  not  elapse 
ere,  instead  of  passing  their  lives  in  a  state  of  unprofitable 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  245 

ease  and  useless  enjoyment,  they  might  reasonably  expect 
to  be  the  terror  and  astonishment  of  the  universe,  and  to 
be  able  to  annoy  every  nation  of  any  consequence."  In 
fact,  said  this  audacious  Disraeli  (who  desired  to  become 
Prime  Minister),  as  clearly  as  burlesque  would  allow  him 
to  say,  the  islanders  were  to  embark  on  the  attempt  to 
become  another  England. 

But  there  was  more  wisdom  in  Fantaisie  than  this 
hysterical  student  suspected  in  his  condition  of  intellectual 
drunkenness.  When  his  speech  ended,  the  monarch  had 
a  fit  of  laughter  and  said:  "I  have  not  an  idea  what  this 
man  is  talking  about,  but  I  know  that  he  makes  my  head 
ache;  give  me  a  cup  of  wine,  and  let  us  have  a  dance." 
Eventually,  to  make  quite  sure  that  this  dangerous  habit 
of  learning  should  not  spread,  the  islanders  put  the  only 
lunatic  the  island  possessed — the  man  who  had  read  the 
books — into  a  canoe,  and  set  him  adrift  to  seek  another 
land  that  suited  him  better.  He  discovered  England,  the 
island  of  Vraibleusia,  with  its  capital  city  of  Hubbabub. 
The  rest  is  a  shrieking  pantomime  of  brilliant  wit;  the 
sum  total  is  that  it  laughs  the  whole  nation  off  the  stage. 
Our  liberty,  our  finance,  the  bankers,  the  National  Debt, 
our  officials,  smart  society,  the  land  system,  the  law,  the 
Cabinet — in  short,  everything  about  us — is  made  into  a 
laughing-stock,  where  all  the  laughs  are  on  one  side, 
England  is  "shown  up."  Of  course,  Disraeli  was  quite 
safe:  there  were  not  many  people  who  were  bright 
enough  to  see  they  were  being  laughed  at.  If  it  were  not 
for  the  dull,  men  like  this  Jewish  wit-philosopher  would 
not  be  safe. 

The  important  thing  the  book  teaches  is  that  Disraeli 
totally  rejected  the  ideals  of  modern  society:  he  thought 


246    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

the  development  theory  stupid  and  the  laws  of  utility 
mainly  folly.  And,  in  any  case,  he  made  it  quite  plain 
that  he  considered  the  islanders  of  Fantaisie  the  wiser 
people.  The  imagined  perfection  of  the  system  of  Vrai- 
bleusia  was  a  sheer  myth:  the  inhabitants  thought  they 
were  a  great  and  a  wealthy  people,  whereas  they  were  tied 
in  a  knot  of  contradictions  that  left  only  confusion  and 
worry.  Even  their  liberty  was  a  delusion;  for  "free  con- 
stitutions are  apt  to  be  misunderstood  until  half  of  the 
nation  are  bayoneted  and  the  rest  imprisoned."  The 
dull  people,  forgetting  Oliver  Cromwell  and  many  more, 
said  this  was  a  stupid  exaggeration;  but  almost  all  Dis- 
raeli's wit  is  based  on  sound  historical  facts,  and  there  is 
scarcely  a  line  of  this  Popanilla  that  might  not  be  used 
as  a  historical  text-book.  Disraeli  did  not  build  an  Eng- 
land of  his  own  imagination;  he  took  the  land  as  it  ex- 
isted. The  imagination  was  all  on  the  side  of  the  people 
who  thought — and  still  think — that  our  modern  system  is 
the  creation  of  rational  men  and  women.  Disraeli  said, 
as  clearly  as  wit  could  say,  that  it  was  entirely  irrational. 
Such  being  the  Disraeli  who  wrote  and  thought,  there 
remains  the  other  Disraeli  who  went  into  politics.  It  was 
a  double  life  indeed;  and  it  is  interesting  to  discover  from 
Disraeli  himself  what  was  the  nature  of  the  link  between 
the  two.  We  have  seen  how  his  wife  had  recorded  that 
her  husband  was  exceedingly  ambitious  to  become  famous, 
and  that  he  had  chosen  politics  for  his  career.  He  was 
surely  wise;  for  he  had  listened  to  the  debates  in  the 
Houses  and  he  knew  he  could  easily  win  in  a  game  like 
that.  He  had  brains  and  he  had  the  gift  of  a  ready 
tongue.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  the  latter  quality  in 
Parliament,  but  the  intellectual  fuel  was  not  overabun- 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  247 

dant.  Anyhow,  Disraeli  chose  politics,  and  it  is  unlikely 
that  he  had  failed  to  measure  the  factors  of  the  problem. 
When,  in  his  early  life,  he  had  frankly  told  Lord  Mel- 
bourne, "I  want  to  be  Prime  Minister,"  that  typical 
member  of  the  governing  class  had  been  equally  frank: 
"You  must  put  all  these  foolish  notions  out  of  your  head," 
adding  the  details  that  for  such  a  post  the  stringent  regu- 
lations were  "old  blood,  high  rank,  great  fortune  and 
greater  ability."  By  which  answer  his  lordship  proved 
himself  to  be  a  very  foolish  prophet  and  a  very  conceited 
man.  Of  course,  in  a  worldly  sense  Melbourne  was  right. 
What  was  wrong  about  his  estimate  was  the  usual  bad 
judgment  of  the  whole  governing  class — he  put  ability 
last  on  the  list  of  the  qualifications.  As  it  happened, 
Disraeli  had  enough  ability  to  swamp  all  the  attached 
schedule  of  necessary  virtues.  He  could  circle  round  the 
Lord  Melbournes  and  their  class  as  a  racing  yacht  can 
circle  round  a  barge.  Even  all  their  blood  and  rank  and 
fortune  could  not  pull  them  through  when  they  met  a 
man  with  brains. 

Nevertheless,  the  young  Disraeli  could  scarcely  know 
this — a  great  deal  of  recent  history  was  against  him. 
For  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  England  had  submitted  to 
the  rule  of  men  such  as  Melbourne  had  described.  But 
Disraeli  had  good  grounds  for  his  confidence.  W^hat  is 
more  difl^cult  to  understand  is  his  decision  that  the  game 
was  worth  the  trouble,  or,  still  more,  that  it  could  be 
adjusted  to  his  moral  convictions.  There  is  no  doubt  of 
the  sincerity  of  the  religious  and  social  creed  that  he  had 
expounded  in  his  books.  It  was  a  very  lofty  and  noble 
creed,  whereas  he  had  himself  proved  that  political  life 
was  a  cesspool  of  meanness.     Even  his  own  great  gift  of 


248    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

speech  he  had  described  in  Popanilla  as  one  of  the  chief 
dangers  of  popular  freedom:  a  glib  tongue  could  snatch 
away  more  liberty  than  it  won.  It  was  one  of  the  most 
profoundly  true  things  that  Disraeli  ever  said,  and  the 
concealment  of  that  truth  is  one  of  the  chief  necessities 
of  the  political  agitator,  who  lives  by  his  tongue  as  hon- 
ester  men  live  by  making  chairs  or  wheelbarrows.  On 
page  after  page  Disraeli  had  exposed  the  futilities  and 
sordidness  of  politics.  "It  is  hardly  possible,"  he  wrote 
in  Coningsby,  "that  a  young  man  could  rise  from  the 
study  of  these  annals  without  a  confirmed  disgust  for 
political  intrigue;  a  dazzling  practice,  apt  at  first  to 
fascinate  youth,  for  it  appeals  at  once  to  our  invention 
and  our  courage,  but  one  which  should  only  be  the 
resource  of  the  second-rate.  Great  minds  must  trust  to 
great  truths  and  great  talents  for  their  rise,  and  nothing 
else." 

He  himself  proved  that  politics  was  one  long  compro- 
mise, and  often  in  vain.  He  did  not  even  believe  in  the 
representative  system :  when  Tancred  left  for  Palestine 
he  said:  "I  go  to  a  land  that  has  never  been  blessed  by 
that  fatal  drollery  called  a  representative  government." 
Disraeli  believed  in  a  strong  monarch,  and  he  believed  in 
strong  and  active  municipal  administration.  But  then  he 
did  not  ask  to  be  made  a  king  or  a  town  councillor — he 
went  into  the  House  of  Commons.  He  had  defined  the 
alternatives:  "Was  it  to  be  a  Tory  government,  or  an 
Enlightened-Spirit-of-the-Age  Liberal-Moderate-Reform 
government?  Was  it  to  be  a  government  of  high  philos- 
ophy or  of  low  practice;  of  principle  or  of  expediency;  of 
great  measures  or  of  little  men?    A  government  of  states- 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  249 

men  or  of  clerks?  Of  Humbug  or  Humdrum?"  Note 
the  final  contrast:  it  all  came  to  Humbug  or  Humdrum 
in  the  end.  At  the  bottom  of  his  heart  Disraeli  knew 
he  was  what  he  made  Sidonia  say  for  him:  "I  am  and 
must  ever  be  but  a  dreamer  of  dreams" — and  yet  he  be- 
came a  politician. 

He  knew  that  meant  an  end  of  his  dreams.  He  was 
continually  warning  his  readers  of  the  danger  of  infection 
in  public  life.  As  he  launched  his  hero  and  heroine  on  the 
last  page  of  Coningsby  he  wrote:  "They  stand  on  the 
threshold  of  public  life.  .  .  .  Will  they  maintain  in 
august  assemblies  and  high  places  the  great  truths  which, 
in  study  and  solitude,  they  have  embraced?  Or  will  their 
courage  exhaust  itself  in  the  struggle?  .  .  .  Will  their 
skilled  intelligence  subside  into  being  the  adroit  tool  of  a 
corrupt  party?  Will  Vanity  confound  their  fortunes  or 
Jealousy  wither  their  sympathies?"  And  that  was  not 
the  most  hopeless  side  of  the  problem;  for  he  might  have 
had  sufficient  sureness  that  he  could  resist  temptation  to 
betray  his  principles.  But  he  knew  that  the  irony  of 
political  life  was  that  high  principles  were  as  impossible 
in  that  atmosphere  as  a  fish  is  impossible  on  the  dry 
land  or  a  quadruped  in  the  sea.  His  incorruptible  Sybil 
"found  to  her  surprise  that  great  thoughts  have  very 
little  to  do  with  the  business  of  the  world;  that  human 
affairs,  even  in  an  age  of  revolution,  are  the  subject  of 
compromise;  and  that  the  essence  of  compromise  is  little- 
ness." She  saw  that  the  popular  leaders,  picked  out  by 
the  people  themselves,  were,  like  the  rest,  filled  with  "wild 
ambitions  and  sinister  and  selfish  ends."  The  two  earnest 
and  sincere  labour  leaders  of  Sybil,   Dandy   Mick   and 


250    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

Devilsdust,  became  "the  firm  of  Radley,  Mowbray  and 
Co.  .  .  .  and  will  probably  furnish  in  time  a  crop  of 
members  of  Parliament  and  peers  of  the  realm." 

Disraeli  went  into  Parliament  as  a  career,  because  he 
had  no  great  hopes  of  achieving  anything  except  his 
ambitions;  his  principles  he  never  imagined  he  could 
reach.  He  did  not  believe  in  any  possibility  of  sudden 
change :  being  a  historian  and  a  sane  man,  he  knew  that 
men  can  never  force  the  pace  of  their  affairs;  they  are 
always  the  sons  of  their  fathers  and  the  inheritors  of  the 
virtues  and  vices  of  the  last  generations;  and  they  will 
transmit  their  own  to  the  next,  in  great  part.  The  re- 
former, therefore,  is  rather  the  spectator  at  a  play  than 
an  originator  of  some  new  plan;  and  even  if  he  be  an 
actor  on  the  stage,  he  can  but  speak  the  lines  set  down 
in  his  part.  Reform  in  Disraeli's  mind  was  little  more 
than  the  continuation  of  history.  When  Mr.  Cassilis  is 
explaining  the  "Young  England"  movement  which 
summed  up  Disraeli's  ideals  in  public  life,  he  said:  "They 
say  it  requires  a  deuced  deal  of  history.  One  must  brush 
up  one's  Goldsmith.  Canterton  used  to  be  the  fellow  for 
history  at  White's.  He  was  always  boring  one  with 
William  the  Conqueror,  Julius  Caesar,  and  all  that  sort 
of  thing."  But  if  Reform  was  only  the  next  chapter  of 
history,  Disraeh  had  made  up  his  mind  to  be  something 
approaching  a  Conqueror  himself. 

In  short,  Disraeli  was  a  real  Democrat:  he  believed 
that  we  can  never  get  beyond  the  traditions  and  desires 
of  the  nation  as  a  great  whole :  "If  the  nation  that  elects 
the  Parliament  be  corrupt,  the  elected  body  will  resemble 
it.  The  nation  that  is  corrupt  deserves  to  fall.  But 
this  only  shows  that  there  is  something  to  be  considered 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  251 

beyond  forms  of  government,  national  character.  And 
herein  mainly  should  we  repose  our  hopes.  If  a  nation 
be  led  to  aim  at  the  good  and  the  great,  depend  upon  it, 
whatever  be  its  form,  the  Government  will  respond  to  its 
convictions  and  its  sentiments."  Most  of  the  things 
they  discussed  in  Parliament  were  idle  fancies  in  Disraeli's 
reading  of  political  science — they  simply  did  not  matter. 
He  thought  constitutional  changes  rather  hindered  re- 
form than  brought  it  nearer;  and  he  must  have  been 
laughing  in  his  sleeve  during  most  of  the  debates  wherein 
he  figured  so  brilliantly  in  the  Houses.  "In  a  word, 
true  wisdom  lies  in  the  policy  which  would  effect  its  ends 
by  the  influence  of  opinion,  and  yet  by  the  means  of  exist- 
ing forms."  It  would  be  the  truest  reading  of  Disraeli's 
record  if  we  regard  his  books,  up  to  Tancred,  at  least, 
as  the  main  part  of  his  career — when  he  was  educating 
his  fellow-citizens  to  think  accurately  and  to  feel  nobly. 
For  the  rest  of  his  life — his  political  career — he  took  to 
politics  as  others  take  to  golf  or  archaeology  or  collecting 
beetles,  as  a  hobby  for  one's  spare  time  or  one's  retired 
years.  The  books  were  the  real  Disraeli,  in  his  serious 
mood.  The  speeches  in  Parliament,  the  high  offices  of 
State,  were  merely  the  flavouring  sauces  of  life,  the 
liqueur  after  dinner.  Disraeli's  great  political  success 
displayed  not  his  strength,  but  his  weakness,  his  human 
frailty,  which  could  not  resist  the  applause  of  the  crowd, 
which  insisted  that  he  should  strive  to  be  great,  not  in 
the  opinion  of  the  wise,  but  in  the  opinion  of  to-morrow 
morning's  newspaper  leader.  We  read  Disraeli's  novels 
for  the  good  of  our  morals  and  our  intellects — and  their 
wit  is  thrown  in  as  a  reward.  But  his  political  career 
may  be  neglected  unless  we  seek  for  the  amusement  of  a 


252    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

first-class  tale  of  adventure.  "Adventures  are  to  the  ad- 
venturous," he  wrote;  and  the  man  who  started  his  po- 
litical career  by  suggesting  to  the  politicians  in  possession 
that  the  lowness  of  their  principles  was  only  equalled 
by  the  meanness  of  their  methods,  who  declared  that  the 
hated  race  to  which  he  belonged  was  one  of  the  greatest 
and  noblest  factors  in  history — such  a  man  had  clearly 
made  up  his  mind  to  a  frontal  attack  in  broad  daylight. 
He  was  surely  the  lightest-hearted  adventurer  who  ever 
set  forth  with  his  fortune  on  his  back.  In  this  case  the 
fortune  was  entirely  in  his  head,  though  his  enemies 
might  have  hinted  that  a  large  part  of  it  was  on  his  em- 
broidered waistcoats. 

His  early  career  in  the  House  of  Commons  (it  began 
in  1837)  was  the  finest  part  of  it — when  he  was  untram- 
melled by  office  and  a  freebooter  of  the  reputations  of  his 
opponents.  Whenever  he  had  a  moment  to  spare  in  the 
political  moves,  he  was  maintaining  the  principles  of 
his  philosophy  of  life,  the  wit  of  it  as  well  as  the  matter. 
He  was  his  best  real  self  in  those  earlier  years — with  all 
his  contempt  for  the  insincerity  and  dull  pomp  of  politics. 
A  letter  to  his  wife  relates  his  first  sitting  and  the  elec- 
tion of  the  Speaker:  "Shaw  Lefevre  proposed,  and 
Strutt  of  Derby  seconded,  Abercromby.  Both  were 
brief;  the  first  commonplace,  the  other  commonplace  and 
coarse;  all  was  tame.  Peel  said  a  very  little,  very  well. 
Then  Abercromby,  who  looked  like  an  old  laundress, 
mumbled  and  moaned  some  dullness,  and  was  then 
carried  to  a  chair,  and  said  a  little  more  amid  a  faint 
dull  cheer."  Disraeli  succeeded  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons because  he  had  a  fine  contempt  for  it.  He  was 
howled  down  in  his  maiden  speech,  when  he  told  its  dull 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  253 

"old  laundress"  that  the  great  Reform  Act  which  they 
thought  such  a  miracle  of  political  wisdom  had  been  use- 
less:  "the  stain  of  boroughmongering  had  only  assumed 
a  deeper  and  darker  hue,"  and  elections  were  more  cor- 
rupt than  before.  The  House,  which  is  tolerant  of 
trivial  party  squabbles,  at  this  attack  on  its  sacred  system 
of  privileges  behaved  rather  after  the  manner  of  a  foot- 
ball crowd  that  has  taken  a  dislike  to  the  referee.  It  was 
a  sign  that  this  man  was  not  only  the  opponent  of  half 
the  House,  but  a  radical  objector  to  the  whole  of  it. 

Strangely  enough,  Peel,  who  ought  to  have  been  able 
to  judge  men  by  this  time,  imagined  that  he  had  gained 
a  valuable  supporter  in  the  new  member.  It  only  showed 
what  a  dull-witted  fellow  Sir  Robert  was;  for  Disraeli 
made  his  commanding  position  in  Parliament  by  a  series 
of  attacks  on  this  Prime  Minister  and  his  policy  which 
not  merely  won  the  astonished  admiration  of  the  Com- 
mons, but  set  all  Europe — which  could  scarcely  be  ex- 
pected to  take  our  internal  politics  very  seriously — into 
shrieks  of  laughter.  To  set  up  the  free-lance  Disraeli 
to  debate  against  the  established  Peel  had  the  natural  re- 
sult. Peel  came  out  of  the  contest  as  an  earnest  curate 
would  emerge  from  a  debate  with  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw. 
Peel  was  half  drowned.  He  was  saved,  when  it  came  to 
votes,  because  there  was  a  majority  of  dull  people  in  the 
House  like  himself.  But  each  night,  as  he  was  pulled 
out  of  the  torrent  of  Disraeli's  brilliant  sarcasm,  it  was 
a  pitiable  object  that  was  hauled  on  the  bank. 

The  subject-matter  of  these  famous  speeches  against 
Peel  mainly  centred  round  the  Corn  Laws.  But  it  was 
much  more  than  a  question  of  finance,  of  custom  duties, 
o-f  cheap  food.     Tfae  struggle  between  the  old  England 


254    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

of  farmers  and  the  new  England  of  factories  had  at  last 
come  to  the  crisis.  The  significance  of  Disraeli's  posi- 
tion in  our  political  history  is  that  he  was  the  beginning 
of  the  political  reaction  against  the  Industrial  Revolution. 
When  he  entered  the  House  of  Commons  in  1837,  the 
full  horrors  of  the  new  capitalist  factory  system  had  ar- 
rived. The  new  school  of  statesmen  appeared  to  ap- 
prove of  this  system  as  a  whole,  however  much  they 
might  want  to  soften  its  rough  corners.  Even  a  man 
who  called  for  Factory  Acts  and  Truck  Acts  might  still 
be  glad  that  the  Industrial  Revolution  had  happened. 
Peel  and  Bright  and  Cobden  were  the  men  who  repre- 
sented all  that  the  new  industry  meant  in  our  history; 
and  they  were  followed  by  the  Gladstones  and  the  high 
finance  of  the  present-day  Cabinets.  Disraeli  was  the 
first  great  statesman  to  cry  halt  in  our  mad  progress. 
As  we  have  seen,  in  Popanilla  he  poured  scorn  on  the 
whole  modern  system  of  economics  and  politics.  He 
flatly  refused  to  accept  the  popular  cry  that  Utility  was 
the  supreme  test  of  social  wealth.  It  was  not  to  give  the 
farmers  high  prices  that  he  fought  to  preserve  the  Corn 
Laws;  that  was  only  an  incident  in  his  desire  to  preserve 
the  agriculture  of  England  because  it  was  a  healthy  hu- 
man tradition  that  the  farmer  is  the  base  of  all  the  best 
nations.  A  factory  might  pay  higher  profits,  which 
might  be  a  sufficient  argument  for  a  materialist  like  Peel 
or  the  Quaker  Bright.  But  Disraeli,  who  did  not  meas- 
ure the  happiness  of  man  by  his  balance-sheet,  thought 
that  it  was  worth  preserving  English  cornfields,  even  if 
we  paid  a  higher  price  for  our  bread. 

The  great  struggle  went  against  Disraeli.     The  manu- 
facturers got  cheap  corn,  which  meant  cheaper  laboyr; 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  255 

the  working  man  was  convinced  that  cheap  bread  was  a 
clear  gain  for  himself;  so  Disraeli — the  inspirer  of  the 
resistance  to  Free  Trade — persuaded  the  Tory  party  that 
it  must  accept  the  verdict  of  the  majority.  There  are 
not  many  men  who  sacrifice  their  principles  in  order  to 
remain  a  democrat!  This  battle,  the  first  of  his  political 
career,  brought  the  ideals  of  his  books  to  the  test.  It 
was  a  sharp  lesson  to  him  that  he  was  a  dreamer  in  an 
age  that  was  very  wide  awake  in  the  work  of  making 
money.  He  never  really  believed  that  the  ideals  of  his 
books  would  be  practical  politics  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons; and  his  career  became  the  rather  pointless  journey 
of  that  day-to-day  manoeuvring  which  is  the  normal  ex- 
istence of  the  ordinary  political  leader.  It  would  be  hard 
to  find  any  case  where  Disraeli  did  anything  which  was  a 
betrayal  of  his  ideals;  but  it  would  be  equally  hard  to  give 
any  case  where  he  did  much  to  make  any  fundamental 
change  in  the  direction  of  his  old  dreams.  But  one  great 
line  of  policy  certainly  owes  much  to  him,  if  not  the 
main  credit.  The  passionate  protests  of  Sybil  against 
the  horrors  of  industrial  life  fixed  social  reform  as  the 
perpetual  disturber  of  the  peace  of  the  callous  Houses 
of  Parliament. 

Disraeli's  social  novels  were  the  creative  force  of  that 
"Young  England"  party  which  for  a  few  years,  in  the 
forties,  looked  as  though  it  might  be  the  beginning  of  a 
new  phase  of  national  politics.  It  was  but  a  very  rapidly 
passing  flicker  of  light  in  a  very  dark  world.  The  men 
who  appear  as  the  heroes  of  Disraeli's  novels  were  in 
real  life  the  leaders  of  "Young  England,"  but  unfortu- 
nately they  also  had  to  act  as  the  rank  and  file — for  there 
were  not  enough  followers  to  supply  privates  as  well  as 


256    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

officers  In  this  army  of  idealists.  Perhaps  it  was 
Disraeli's  speech,  in  1839,  in  defence  of  the  Chartists 
that  founded  the  little  group.  When  the  House  of  Com- 
mons refused  to  receive  the  Great  Petition,  this  young 
member  (who  Peel  thought  was  going  to  be  a  support 
for  his  party  of  plutocrats)  told  the  chamber  that  "the 
rights  of  labour  are  as  sacred  as  the  rights  of  property." 
But  he  was  almost  the  only  brave  and  wise  man  present. 
The  natural  result  of  this  insolent  rejection  on  the  part 
of  their  masters  was  rioting,  which  is  the  usual  result  of 
incapable  ^statesmen.  In  1843  "Young  England"  had  its 
first  pitched  battle  with  the  orthodox  politicians  in  an 
attempt  to  prevent  the  continued  coercion  of  Ireland  by 
physical  force  by  the  crude  renewal  of  the  Arms  Act. 
Disraeli's  speech  was  a  hint  to  the  House  of  Commons 
that  at  last  it  had  a  member  who  knew  something  about 
English  and  Irish  history:  he  informed  his  audience  that 
he  had  "no  faith  in  any  statesman  who  attempts  to 
remedy  the  evils  of  Ireland  who  is  either  ignorant  of  the 
past  or  who  will  not  deign  to  learn  from  it."  He  said 
that  the  Bill  before  the  House  was  so  futile  that  it  was 
not  worth  a  journey  through  either  lobby;  he  could  only 
hope  that  a  real  attempt  would  be  made  to  penetrate 
"the  mystery  of  this  great  misgovernment,"  and  bring  to 
an  end  "a  state  of  things  that  is  the  banc  of  England  and 
the  opprobrium  of  Europe."  Disraeli  was  perhaps  the 
only  English  statesman  of  the  nineteenth  century  who 
could  have  put  Irish  government  on  an  endurable  basis, 
for  he  was  almost  the  only  one  who  combined  historical 
knowledge  with  imagination  and  the  nature  of  a  gentle- 
man.    But  there  were  never  enough  other  gentlemen  of 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  257 

imagination  to  give  him  a  working  majority,  and  dull  stu- 
pidity is  still  in  control  of  Dublin  Castle. 

Disraeli's  old  ideals  had  another  breathing  space  in  the 
new  Reform  agitation  which  preceded  his  Franchise  Bill 
of   1867.      The  great  Act  of   1832  had  merely  enfran- 
chised the  middle  classes;  the  Act  of  1867  was  the  first 
surrender  of  political  voting  power  to  the  poor,  which 
had  been  the  cry  of  the  figures  of  romance  in  Coningsby 
and  Sybil.     Disraeli  declared  his  hope  that  by  this  meas- 
ure he  had  helped  to  resist  the  advance  of  a  commercial 
plutocracy  to  supreme  power;  and  he  had  done  it,  he  be- 
lieved, by  thus  assisting  "the  invigorating  energies  of  an 
educated  and  enfranchised  people."     This,  he  reminded 
his   audience,   was   his   avowed  purpose  as  long  ago   as 
1846,  ^^hen  he  had  made  his  fight  against  the  repeal  of 
the    Corn    Laws — a    repeal    which    he    saw    meant    the 
strengthening  of  the  middle  classes,   who,   in   Disraeli's 
mind,  were  the  foundation  of  industrial  tyranny  over  the 
poor,  in  a  far  more  grinding  way  than  the  landlords  had 
ever  been  able   (even  if  willing)   to  exercise  it.     On  the 
surface  the  Reform  Bill  of  1867,  when  it  emerged  from 
the  debates,  was  in  many  clauses  drafted  by  Gladstone 
and  Bright;  and  Lord  Cranborne,  the  future  Lord  Salis- 
bury   (the   Prime  Minister  of  later  days),  was   full  of 
sneers   at  the   insincerity  of  the  creator  of  the   Bill   in 
adopting  any  clauses  which  would  get  it  through  the  di- 
vision  lobbies.      But  there   is  every  sort  of  proof  that 
Disraeli  was  only  too  glad  to  have  his  Tory  supporters 
forced  into  a  more  democratic  measure.     And  the  com- 
parison of  the  careers  of  the  Tory  Disraeli  and  the  Lib- 
eral Gladstone  will  leave  little  doubt  that  the  former  was 


258    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

a  natural  friend  of  the  poor,  while  the  latter  regarded 
them  as  useful  factors  in  his  voting  strength  at  a  gen- 
eral election.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  soon  to  show  his  real 
nature  by  passing  an  Act  which  almost  crushed  Trade 
Unionism,  which  Disraeli  saved  by  promptly  repealing 
the  Liberal  Act,  and  then  substituting  a  new  Act  of  1875, 
when  he  returned  to  power.  It  was  during  this  same 
term  of  office  that  the  Tory  Government  passed  a  batch 
of  social  measures  which  were  the  first  systematic  at- 
tempt to  devise  a  system  of  social  reform.  Such  were 
the  Factory  and  Workshop  Act  of  1878;  the  Artisans' 
Dwellings  Act,  1875;  the  Friendly  Societies  Act;  the 
Merchant  Shipping  Act,  and  the  Enclosure  of  Commons 
Act,  which  for  the  first  time  considered  the  welfare  of 
the  general  public  when  enclosures  were  made.  A  poor 
little  group,  perhaps,  for  the  dreamer  of  the  moral  and 
economic  revolution  of  England;  but  what  can  an  idealist 
do  in  a  world  that  is  dull? 

Of  the  Peace  of  Berlin — the  "peace  with  honour" — 
of  such  events  as  the  buying  of  the  Suez  Canal  shares,  the 
history-books  are  full.  They  were  the  least  important, 
the  least  ennobling  things  that  Disraeli  did,  so  we  nat- 
urally hear  most  about  them  from  those  who  think  quietly 
along  the  well-beaten  tracks.  But  the  proclamation  (in 
1877)  of  the  Queen  of  England  as  Empress  of  India 
was  not  merely  the  display  of  full-blooded  Imperialism 
that  the  West  End  clubs  and  the  East  End  pubs  imagined 
and  hoped  it  was.  From  the  days  of  Coningsby  and 
Sybil,  Disraeli  had  looked  to  the  monarchy  with  a  long- 
ing that  it  might  be  strengthened  to  protect  the  people 
against  the  oligarchy  of  the  rich.  Wrongly  or  rightly, 
he  thought  there  was  less  danger  of  despotism  under  a 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  259 

strong  monarchy  than  under  a  strong  oligarchy,  or  even 
under  a  Parliament  which  in  practice  still  only  repre- 
sented the  rich  and  middle  classes — for  when  the  poor 
had  votes,  how  often  did  they  guard  their  own  interests? 
Having  the  common-sense  eyes  of  the  man  of  imagina- 
tion, Disraeli  saw,  quite  clearly,  that  they  voted  as  their 
masters  ordered.  This  strengthening  of  the  Crown  of 
England  by  adding  the  Empire  of  India  to  it  (however 
unwise  and  unjust  to  the  Indians,  as  some  may  think)  was 
yet  in  Disraeli's  eyes  a  movement  towards  democracy 
rather  than  to  Imperialism.  It  was  part  of  his  old  ideals. 
The  little  personalities  of  a  man  count  for  so  much 
more  than  his  intellect  and  his  ideals.  If  one  really 
wants  to  know  how  a  man  will  behave  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  then  watch  him  in  his  moments  of  leisure,  in 
his  hobbies  rather  than  in  the  lobbies — indeed,  at  any 
moment  except  when  he  is  on  the  political  benches. 
Watch  him  behind  the  scenes,  not  when  he  is  behind  the 
footlights  and  the  curtain  is  up.  It  is  worth  remember- 
ing in  one's  judgment  of  this  man  that  he  (like  his  con- 
temporary Palmcrston)  was  continually  behaving  like  a 
gentleman  when  too  many  of  his  colleagues  in  the  politi- 
cal world  were  behaving  in  manner  more  appropriate 
to  cads.  Time  after  time,  when  he  thought  it  was  for 
the  interest  of  his  party  or  of  the  nation,  Disraeli  offered 
to  stand  on  one  side,  surrendering  claims  for  office  which 
were  irresistible  if  he  had  pressed  them.  There  was 
the  day  in  1852  when  he  offered  to  give  up  the  Leader- 
ship in  the  Commons  to  Palmerston  and  the  right  to  the 
Chancellorship  of  the  Exchequer  to  Gladstone,  if  this 
would  enable  Lord  Derby  to  form  a  strong  Ministry  to 
rescue  England  from  the  utter  mismanagement  of  the 


26o    MODERN  ENGLISH  STATESMEN 

Crimean  War.  It  is  necessary  to  remember  that  much 
of  the  muddle  and  confusion  had  occurred,  and  the  late 
Government  of  Lord  Aberdeen  had  fallen,  largely  be- 
cause of  the  recklessly  selfish  conduct  of  Lord  John 
Russell,  who  at  this  moment  could  apparently  be  loyal 
neither  to  his  friends  nor  to  his  country.  Again,  in 
1858,  when  Derby  offered  the  India  Office  to  Gladstone, 
Disraeli  made  the  most  generous  advances  to  enable  his 
rival  to  accept — and  for  all  his  thanks  he  got  the  stiff 
reply  which  one  would  have  expected  from  the  most 
narrow-minded  political  leader  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
One  other  example :  Disraeli  refused  to  make  party  capi- 
tal out  of  the  personal  triumph  of  the  Berlin  Congress, 
because  he  believed  that  these  matters  of  international 
importance  should  never  sink  to  the  level  of  politicians' 
squabblings. 

But,  candidly,  to  continue  to  discuss  Benjamin  Dis- 
raeli's practical  life  after  learning  the  ideals  of  his  life 
in  his  books  must  inevitably  bring  the  disappointment  of 
a  dull  third  act  after  a  brilliant  first.  He  was  infinitely 
more  interesting,  more  instructive,  and  more  lovable  than 
his  contemporary  statesmen.  But  he  lived  in  an  age 
which  could  not  follow  the  sweep  of  his  Oriental  imagina- 
tion— an  age  which  would  probably  hav«  adopted  the 
manners  of  the  East,  his  home,  and  stoned  him  if  he  had 
been  understood.  Perhaps  the  most  pregnant  sentence 
he  wrote  (in  Sybil  in  1844)  summed  up  his  period  and 
explained  the  cause  of  his  failure  to  reform  it:  "If  a 
spirit  of  rapacious  covetousness,  desecrating  all  the  hu- 
manities of  life,  has  been  the  besetting  sin  of  England 
for  the  last  century  and  a  half,  since  the  passing  of  the 
Reform  Act  the  altar  oi  Mammon  has  blazed  with  triple 


BENJAMIN  DISRAELI  261 

worship.  To  acquire,  to  accumulate,  to  plunder  each 
other  by  virtue  of  philosophic  phrases,  to  propose  a 
Utopia  to  consist  only  of  Wealth  and  Toil — this  has 
been  the  breathless  business  of  enfranchised  England  for 
the  last  twelve  years,  until  we  are  startled  from  our 
voracious  strife  by  the  wail  of  intolerable  serfage."  If 
a  man  thought  that,  it  was  clear  that  there  was  no  politi- 
cal party  which  would  assist  him.  As  a  politician  he  was 
doomed  to  failure  from  the  day  he  started — a  somewhat 
doleful  thought,  when  one  remembers  that  he  was  the 
most  wide-visioned  statesman  that  England  has  produced 
these  three  hundred  years.  But  then,  during  that  time, 
politics  has  been  a  trade  for  the  crafty  and  the  shallow, 
who  have  succeeded  beyond  their  expectations. 


INDEX 


Abercrombie,  Sir  Ralph,   158 
Aberdeen,  4th  Earl  of,  260 
Alfred  the  Great,  4,  23,  24,  229 
American   Colonies,   115,   116,    199, 

202,  209 
Anselm,  Archbishop,  5,  87,  230 
Arms  Act  (Ireland),  256 
Augustus,  Emperor  of  Rome,   i 

Beaconsfield,  Earl  of  (see  Dis- 
raeli) 

Beaconsfield,  Viscountess  (Mrs. 
Disraeli),  214 

Becket,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 

5 
Bede,  the  Venerable,  4 
Bedford,  4th  Earl  of,  42 
Bedford,  Duke  of,  189,  192-194 
Beer,  G.  L.   (quoted),  72 
Belgians,  Leopold,  King  of,  212 
Berlin,  Treaty  of  1878,  258,  260 
Bolcyn,  Ann.  6 
Bolingbroke,      Henry      St.     John, 

Lord,  80,  87,  104,  216 
Bolshkaseva,  Marie,  207,  208 
Bourchier,    Elizabeth    (see    Crom- 
well,  Elizabeth) 
Bright,  John,  254,  257 
British   Empire,  11,   13,  14,  69,  71, 

130-134,  137,  138-143,  144 

Burdett,  Sir  Francis,  218 

Burghley,  Lord;  see  Cecil  Wil- 
liam 

Burke,  Edmund,  15-17,  148,  165- 
209 

Burney,  Fanny,  173,   174 

Bute,  John,  Earl  of,  226 

Byng,  Admiral,   107 


Cabinet  System,  the,  106 


Campion,  Edmund,  78 

Canning,   George,   24,  25 

Carnot,  L.  N.  M.,  163 

Caroline,  Queen  of  George  II,  80, 

84-86,  104,  109 
Carson,  Sir  Edward,  69 
Carteret,  George,  afterwards  Earl 

Granville,  88,  95,   104,   145,   165 
Catherine    the    Great    of    Russia, 

196,  204 
Catholic  Emancipation,  157,  2:^0 
Cecil,    Robert,    ist    Earl    of    Salis- 

l)ury,  27 
Cecil,  William,  Lord   Burghley,  7, 

19-25,  33 
Charles   I  of   England,  9,  28  seq.. 

54.  57,  58.  74,  236 
Charles  II  of  England,  11,  29,  124 
Charter,  the  Great,  of    1215,  7 
Charter,  the  Great,  of  1839,  237 
Chesterfield,    Philip,   4th    Earl    of, 

150 
Child,   Sir  Josiah,  124 
Choiseul,  Due  de,  149 
Churchill,   Lord   Randolph,   193 
Clarendon,   1st   Earl  of,  49 
Clark,  Sir  Andrew,  143 
Clive,    Richard,    father    of    Lord 

Clive,  137 
Cnut,  King,  4,  204 
Cobden,  Richard,  254 
Cobham,   Baron,   139 
Colonial  Act  of  1650,  71 
Commons,    supremacy    of    House 

of,  106,  107 
Company  of  the  Adventurers   for 

Plantations,  37 
Coningsby,  213,  219,  222  seq.,  248, 

249,  257,  258 
Conscription,  Military,  4 


263 


264 


INDEX 


Corn  Laws,  the,  253,  254,  257 
Cornwallis,  Marquis  of,  116,  159 
Corporation   Act,    178 
Cowper,  Lady,  85 
Crimean  War,  the,  260 
Cromwell,  Elizabeth,  39 
Cromwell,  Frances,  50 
Cromwell,  Sir  Henry,  39,  40 
Cromwell,  Henry,  71 
Cromwell,  Katherine,  39 
Cromwell,  Mary,  50 
Cromwell,  Oliver,    the    Protector, 
7,  8,  9,    19,  27-75,  93,   165,  246 
Cromwell,  Richard,  39 
Cromwell,  Robert,  40 
Cromwell,  Thomas,  7,  39 
Cunningham,  Dr.   (quoted),  21,  27 
Curzon,  Sir  Nathaniel,  118 

^  -;i 

Derby,  14th  Earl  of,  211,  259,  260 
Disraeli,       Benjamin,       Earl       of 

Beaconsfield,     17-19,     76,     156, 

210-261 
Drcgheda,  siege  of,  67 
Dunstan,  Archbishop,  4 

East  India  Company,  37,  124  seq., 
171-177 

Edward  I,  5,  24 

Edward  IV,  6,  24 

Edward  VI,  6 

Eliot,  Sir  John,  24,  37 

Emily,    Princess    of    England,    109 

Empire,  British  {see  British  Em- 
pire) 

Essex,  3d  Earl  of,  47,  48 

Excise  Bill,  1733,  108,  109,  iii 

Firth,  Professor  C.   H.    (quoted), 

39,  47,  55.  68 
Fortescue,    Hon.    John     (quoted), 

152 
Fox,  C  J.,  162,  172,  174,  176,  178 
Fox,  George,  59 
Fox,  Henry,  165 


Francis,   Sir   Philip,   184 
Frederick,  the  Great,   loi 
French  Revolution,  177  seq. 

Gardiner,     Professor     S.     R. 

(quoted),  64,  65,  69 
George  II,  80,  84,  85,   104,  107 
George  III,   103 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  20,  24,  28,   105, 

254,  257,  259,  260 
Gordon  Riots,  188 
Grenvilles,  the,   139,  I49,  200 
Gresham,  Sir  Thomas,  132 

Habeas     Corpus     Act     suspended, 

155 
Hammond,    Mr.    and    Mrs.    J.    L. 

le  B.    (quoted),   160 
Hampden,  John,  35-37,  40-41,   195, 

200 
Hanoverians,     the     dynasty     and 

period,  103,  105,  211 
Hastings,  Warren,  173,  175 
Heine,  Heinrich,  168,  170,  172 
Henry  II  of  England,  5 
Henry  IV  of  England,  6,  204 
Henry  VII  of  England,  204 
Henry  VIII  of  England,  6 
Herbert,  George,  47,  50 
Herries,  J.  C,  217 
Hervey,  Lord  John,  86 
Holland,  Earl  of,  37 
Holland,  wars  with,  70 
Hume,  Joseph,  218 

Indemnity,  Acts  of,  98 

India,  13,  34,  72,  113,  122  seq.,  175, 

176,  234,  235,  259 
India,  Empress  of,  258 
Industrial  Revolution  in  England, 

7,  182,  254,  255 
Insurance  Act,  4,  109 
Ireland,   66-69,    158,    159,   202,   256 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  170 


INDEX 


265 


Lanfranc,  Archbishop,  5 
Langrishe,  Sir  Hercules,  189 
Laud,  Arclibishop,  47,  49.  65 
Lecky,  \V.  E.  H.   (quoted),   148 
Lenthall,  Speaker,  38 
Leonard,   Fl.   M.    (quoted),  64 
Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace,  186, 

203 
Levellers,  48 
Lilburne.  John,  63 
Long    Parliament,   the,   37.   38,   54. 

55 
Loudoun.   John,   4th   Karl   of,    150 

Louis  XIV,  no,  195 

Louis  XV,  loi,  195.  205 

Louis  XVI,  195 

Lyttleton,  George,  Baron,  139.  I49 

McCulloch,  J.  R.   (quoted).  161 
Magna  Carta,  7 
Major-Generals,  the,  59 
Manchester,  2nd  Earl  of.  41,  42 
Marat,  Jean  Paul,  208 
Marie-Antoinette,  Queen,  168,  183- 

187,  195.  196,  203,  207,  208 
Marlborough,   Sarah,   Duchess   of, 

140,  145 
Marvell,  Andrew,   50 
Mayerne,  Sir  Theodore,  45 
Maynooth,  Endowment  of,  240 
Melbourne,   2nd    Viscount,  247 
Milton,   John,  59 
Monasteries,  the  English,  233 
Moore,  Sir  John.  158 
More,  Sir  Thomas,  24 
Morley,  John  Viscount    (quoted), 

176.  184 
Murray,  John  (quoted),  216 

Napoleon  T.  Emperor  of  the 
French,   17 

Navigation  Acts,  70,  71,  72 

Newcastle,  Thomas  Pelham  Hol- 
ies, Duke  of,  145,  165 

"New  Model"  Army,  47 


Norman  Conquest,  5 
North,   Frederick,   Lord,    171,    176, 
226 

Observations  on  the  Present  State 
of  the  Nation,  202 

O'Connell,  Daniel,  218 

Oldfield,  Ann,  102 

Onslow,  Speaker,  87 

Origin  of  our  Ideas  of  the  Sub- 
lime and  Beautiful,  166,  16S 

"Patri  ts."    the    Boy,  95,    103.    139 

seq.,  146,  149 
Palmerston,  3rd  Viscount,  25,  259 
Peel,  Sir  Robert,  24,  105,  212,  216, 

217,  230,  252-256 
Pelhams,     The      (.see     Newcastle, 

Duke  of) 
Peter  the  Great  of  Russia,  197 
Peter  of  Savoy,  25 
Peters,  Hugh,  54 
Philpot,  Sir  John,   132 
Pitt,  Ann,  164 
Pitt,  Essex,  131 
Pitt,  George,    Baron    Rivers,    123, 

131 

Pitt,  John,  2nd  Earl  of  Chatham, 
118 

Pitt,  Lucy,   131 

Pitt,  Nicholas,   123 

Pitt,  Thomas,  Earl  of  London- 
derry, 130 

Pitt,  Thomas,  "Diamond,"  114. 
122,  124  seq.,  143,  152 

Pitt.  Mrs.,   127 

Pitt.  Thomas,  ist  Baron  Camel- 
ford,  131 

Pitt,  Thomas,  2nd  Baron  Camel- 
ford,  82 

Pitt,  William,  1st  Earl  of  Chat- 
ham, I,  13-15.  24,  79  seq.,  93. 
95,  96,  105.  107,  115,  120-152, 
164,  166,  226 


266 


INDEX 


Pitt,    William,    the    Younger,    14, 

24,  151-163,  226 
Pitt,    William,    of    Strathfieldsaye, 

123 
Pole,  Cardinal,  24 
Poles,  Dukes  of  Suffolk,  132 
Poor  Laws,  58,  64 
PopaniUa,  the  Voyage  of,  18,  219, 

243-246,  254 
Pope,  Alexander,  87,  129 
Price,  Dr.  R.,  161 
Protectorate,  58  scq. 
Prynne,  William,  49,  50 
Pulteney,   William,   Earl   of  Bath, 

107 
Pym,  John,  36,  2>7,  48,  49 

Quebec,  capture  of.  115 

Rainborow,  Colonel,  62 

Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in 
France,  lyy,  178  seq. 

Reform  Act  of  1832,  10,  217,  224. 
257,  260 

Reform  A-ct  of  1867,  257 

Reformation,  English,  6,  39,  226, 
233.  236 

Revolution,  English,  of  1688,  11, 
169,  198 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  170 

Rich,   Edmund,  Archbishop,  24 

Richelieu,  Cardinal,  185 

Robespierre,  Maximilien,  208 

Rockingham,  2nd  Marquis  of,  200, 
201 

Roland,   Madame,   196 

Roman  Republic  and  Empire,  i,  72 

Russell,  Lord  John  (Earl  Rus- 
sell), 217,  260 

Russia,  3,  196,  197 

Sacheverell,  trial,  97 
Salisbury,  3rd  Marquis  of,  2,7,  257 
Seditious   Meetings   Act,   155 
Shaftesbury,  ist  Earl  of,  165 
Shaw,  G.  Bernard,  253 


Sheridan,  Richard,  169 

Shippen,    E.,    leader   of   Jacobites. 

Ill 
Sidney,  Algernon,  72 
Simon  de  Montford,  5,  24 
Sinking  Fund,   161,   162 
Slave  Trade,   160 
Smith,   Sidney,  210 
Social     Reform     Legislation     and 

Disraeli,   257 
South  Sea  Bubble,  85,  91 
Spain,  wars  with,  11,  69,  93-97,  99, 

145.  146 
Stair,  Lord,  104 
Stamp  Act,  1765,  148,  201 
Strafford,       Earl      of       (Thomas 

Wentworth),  28,  29,  42,  58,  62, 

64,  68,  74 
Suez   Canal    Shares,   258 
Sybil,  213,  219,  221  seq.,  228  seq., 

249,  255,  257,  258,  260 

Tancred,  219,  221,  238-242,  251 

Teignmouth,  Lord,   175 

Test  Act,  178 

Townshend,  Charles,  Lord,  80 

Trades-Unions,   Legislation,  258 

Traitorous     Correspondence     Act, 

155 
Treasonable   Practices   Act,    155 
Tudors,    the    dynasty   and    period, 

6,  31,  210,  217 
"Twelve-hundred-a-yearers,"  223 

Vane,  Sir  Harry,  59 

Vaudois,   persecution   of,   44 

Verney,  Lady,  38 

Victoria,  Queen,  18,  211,  212,  258 

Villiers,  Harriet,   130 

Vincent,   127 

Walcheren    Expedition,    118 
Wales,    Frederick,    Prince   of,    iii 
Wallmoden,   Madam,  86 
Walpole,  de.  Bishop,  78 
Walpole,  Edward,  78,  79 


INDEX 


267 


Walpole,  George,  80 

VValpole,  Henry,  78 

Walpole,  Horace,  79,  88,  loi,  iii- 

118,  123,  151 
Walpole.  Horatio,   Baron,  79,  80 
Walpole,   Sir    Robert,   ist    Karl   of 

Orford,  10,  12,  13,  76-119,  136, 

226 
Walpole,    Lady,    i-sl    wife,    85,    91, 

lOI 

Walpole,    Lady,   2nd   wife,    102 
Walpole.  daughter  of  Sir  Robert. 

lOI 

Walsingham.    Sir   Francis,  33 
Wars  of  the  Roses,  6,  7,  226,  227, 

231 
Warwick  the  King-maker,  6,  24 
Wexford,  siege  of,  68 


Whalley,  Edward,  40 
Whittington,   Sir  Richard,   132 
Wiiberforce.    Bishop,    160 
Wiiliam  I,  the  Conqueror,  5,  6,  61, 

204,  210 
William  HI  of  England,  no,   126, 

198,  204 
\Vilii;;m  U,  German  Emperor,  i 
Williams,  Morgan,  39 
Williams,  Richard   (sec  Cromwell, 

Richard) 
Windebank,  Colonel,  51 
Windhiim,   William,    173.    I74.    U7 
VVolsey,  Cardinal,  24,  26,  33 

"\'  ung,  Arthur,  loi 
"Young  En,';Ianfl,"  255,  256 


jJCSOUTHmRmrm,  ,.,.,. 


AA    000  677  43 


1     9 


DA 
28. if 
T21m 
1921 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


AUG  2 


4  ^m 


